Aerosol–radiation interaction modelling using online coupling between the WRF 3.7.1 meteorological model and the CHIMERE 2016 chemistry-transport model, through the OASIS3-MCT coupler

The presence of airborne aerosols affects the meteorology as it induces a perturbation in the radiation budget, the number of cloud condensation nuclei and the cloud micro-physics. Those effects are difficult to model at regional scale as regional chemistry-transport models are usually driven by a d...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geoscientific Model Development Vol. 10; no. 2; pp. 927 - 944
Main Authors: Briant, Régis, Tuccella, Paolo, Deroubaix, Adrien, Khvorostyanov, Dmitry, Menut, Laurent, Mailler, Sylvain, Turquety, Solène
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Katlenburg-Lindau Copernicus GmbH 23.02.2017
European Geosciences Union
Copernicus Publications
Subjects:
Aerosol optical depth
Aerosol optical properties
Aerosols
Atmospheric models
Chemistry
Climate models
Cloud condensation nuclei
Computation
Computer applications
Computer simulation
Condensation nuclei
Couplers
Coupling
Dust
Earth Sciences
Environmental aspects
Feedback
High frequency
Interaction models
Interfaces
Internet
Meteorology
Optical analysis
Optical properties
Optical thickness
Outdoor air quality
Particulate emissions
Particulate matter
Perturbation
Physics
Radiation
Radiation budget
Radiative forcing
Routines
Sciences of the Universe
Simulation
Solar radiation
Surface temperature
Suspended particulate matter
Transport
Variables
France
Asia
Europe
ISSN:1991-9603, 1991-959X, 1991-962X, 1991-9603, 1991-962X, 1991-959X
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:The presence of airborne aerosols affects the meteorology as it induces a perturbation in the radiation budget, the number of cloud condensation nuclei and the cloud micro-physics. Those effects are difficult to model at regional scale as regional chemistry-transport models are usually driven by a distinct meteorological model or data. In this paper, the coupling of the CHIMERE chemistry-transport model with the WRF meteorological model using the OASIS3-MCT coupler is presented. WRF meteorological fields along with CHIMERE aerosol optical properties are exchanged through the coupler at a high frequency in order to model the aerosol–radiation interactions. The WRF-CHIMERE online model has a higher computational burden than both models run separately in offline mode (up to 42 % higher). This is mainly due to some additional computations made within the models such as more frequent calls to meteorology treatment routines or calls to optical properties computation routines. On the other hand, the overall time required to perform the OASIS3-MCT exchanges is not significant compared to the total duration of the simulations. The impact of the coupling is evaluated on a case study over Europe, northern Africa, the Middle East and western Asia during the summer of 2012, through comparisons of the offline and two online simulations (with and without the aerosol optical properties feedback) to observations of temperature, aerosol optical depth (AOD) and surface PM10 (particulate matter with diameters lower than 10 µm) concentrations. The result shows that using the optical properties feedback induces a radiative forcing (average forcing of −4.8 W m−2) which creates a perturbation in the average surface temperatures over desert areas (up to 2.6° locally) along with an increase in both AOD and PM10 concentrations.
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ISSN:1991-9603
1991-959X
1991-962X
1991-9603
1991-962X
1991-959X
DOI:10.5194/gmd-10-927-2017