Intercomparison and Evaluation of Aerosol Microphysical Properties among AeroCom Global Models of a Range of Complexity

0424330 - ÚCHP 2015 RIV DE eng J - Journal Article
Mann, G.W. - Carslaw, K.S. - Reddington, C.L. - Pringle, K.J. - Schulz, M. - Asmi, A. - Spracklen, D.V. - Ridley, D.A. - Woodhouse, M.T. - Lee, L.A. - Zhang, K. - Ghan, S.H. - Easter, R.C. - Liu, X. - Stier, P. - Lee, Y.H. - Adams, P.J. - Tost, H. - Lelieveld, J. - Bauer, S.E. - Tsigaridis, K. - van Noije, T.P.C. - Strunk, A. - Vignati, E. - Bellouin, N. - Dalvi, M. - Johnson, C.E. - Bergman, T. - Kokkola, H. - von Salzen, K. - Yu, F. - Luo, G. - Petzold, A. - Heintzenberger, J. - Clarke, A. - Ogren, J.A. - Gras, J. - Baltensperger, U. - Kaminski, U. - Jennings, S.G. - O'Dowd, C.D. - Harrison, R. M. - Beddows, D.C.S. - Kulmala, M. - Viisanen, Y. - Ulevicius, V. - Mihalopoulos, N. - Ždímal, Vladimír - Fiebich, M. - Hansson, H.-C. - Swietlicki, E. - Henzig, J.S.
Intercomparison and Evaluation of Aerosol Microphysical Properties among AeroCom Global Models of a Range of Complexity.
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. Roč. 14, č. 9 (2014), s. 4679-4713. ISSN 1680-7316. E-ISSN 1680-7324
Institutional support: RVO:67985858
Keywords : global climate models * aerosol processes * particle size distributions
Subject RIV: CF - Physical ; Theoretical Chemistry
Impact factor: 5.053, year: 2014

This study examines the global variation in particle size distribution simulated by twelve global aerosol microphysics models to quantify model diversity and to identify any common biases against observations. Evaluation against size distribution measurements from a new European network of aerosol supersites shows that the mean model agrees quite well with the observations at many sites on the annual mean, but there are some seasonal biases common to many sites. In particular, at many of these European sites, the accumulation mode number concentration is biased low during winter and Aitken mode concentrations tend to be overestimated in winter and underestimated in summer. At high northern latitudes, the models strongly underpredict Aitken and accumulation particle concentrations compared to the measurements, consistent with previous studies that have highlighted the poor performance of global aerosol models in the Arctic. In the marine boundary layer, the models capture the observed meridional variation in the size distribution, which is dominated by the Aitken mode at high latitudes, with an increasing concentration of accumulation particles with decreasing latitude. Considering vertical profiles, the models reproduce the observed peak in total particle concentrations in the upper troposphere due to new particle formation, although modelled peak concentrations tend to be biased high over Europe.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0230419