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    SALSA2.0: The sectional aerosol module of the aerosol-chemistry-climate model ECHAM6.3.0-HAM2.3-MOZ1.0
    (Katlenburg-Lindau : Copernicus, 2018) Kokkola, Harri; Kühn, Thomas; Laakso, Anton; Bergman, Tommi; Lehtinen, Kari E. J.; Mielonen, Tero; Arola, Antti; Stadtler, Scarlet; Korhonen, Hannele; Ferrachat, Sylvaine; Lohmann, Ulrike; Neubauer, David; Tegen, Ina; Siegenthaler-Le Drian, Colombe; Schultz, Martin G.; Bey, Isabelle; Stier, Philip; Daskalakis, Nikos; Heald, Colette L.; Romakkaniemi, Sami
    In this paper, we present the implementation and evaluation of the aerosol microphysics module SALSA2.0 in the framework of the aerosol-chemistry-climate model ECHAM-HAMMOZ. It is an alternative microphysics module to the default modal microphysics scheme M7 in ECHAM-HAMMOZ. The SALSA2.0 implementation within ECHAM-HAMMOZ is evaluated against observations of aerosol optical properties, aerosol mass, and size distributions, comparing also to the skill of the M7 implementation. The largest differences between the implementation of SALSA2.0 and M7 are in the methods used for calculating microphysical processes, i.e., nucleation, condensation, coagulation, and hydration. These differences in the microphysics are reflected in the results so that the largest differences between SALSA2.0 and M7 are evident over regions where the aerosol size distribution is heavily modified by the microphysical processing of aerosol particles. Such regions are, for example, highly polluted regions and regions strongly affected by biomass burning. In addition, in a simulation of the 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption in which a stratospheric sulfate plume was formed, the global burden and the effective radii of the stratospheric aerosol are very different in SALSA2.0 and M7. While SALSA2.0 was able to reproduce the observed time evolution of the global burden of sulfate and the effective radii of stratospheric aerosol, M7 strongly overestimates the removal of coarse stratospheric particles and thus underestimates the effective radius of stratospheric aerosol. As the mode widths of M7 have been optimized for the troposphere and were not designed to represent stratospheric aerosol, the ability of M7 to simulate the volcano plume was improved by modifying the mode widths, decreasing the standard deviations of the accumulation and coarse modes from 1.59 and 2.0, respectively, to 1.2 similar to what was observed after the Mt. Pinatubo eruption. Overall, SALSA2.0 shows promise in improving the aerosol description of ECHAM-HAMMOZ and can be further improved by implementing methods for aerosol processes that are more suitable for the sectional method, e.g., size-dependent emissions for aerosol species and size-resolved wet deposition.
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    On the application and grid-size sensitivity of the urban dispersion model CAIRDIO v2.0 under real city weather conditions
    (Katlenburg-Lindau : Copernicus, 2022) Weger, Michael; Baars, Holger; Gebauer, Henriette; Merkel, Maik; Wiedensohler, Alfred; Heinold, Bernd
    There is a gap between the need for city-wide air-quality simulations considering the intra-urban variability and mircoscale dispersion features and the computational capacities that conventional urban microscale models require. This gap can be bridged by targeting model applications on the gray zone situated between the mesoscale and large-eddy scale. The urban dispersion model CAIRDIO is a new contribution to the class of computational-fluid dynamics models operating in this scale range. It uses a diffuse-obstacle boundary method to represent buildings as physical obstacles at gray-zone resolutions in the order of tens of meters. The main objective of this approach is to find an acceptable compromise between computationally inexpensive grid sizes for spatially comprehensive applications and the required accuracy in the description of building and boundary-layer effects. In this paper, CAIRDIO is applied on the simulation of black carbon and particulate matter dispersion for an entire mid-size city using a uniform horizontal grid spacing of 40gm. For model evaluation, measurements from five operational air monitoring stations representative for the urban background and high-traffic roads are used. The comparison also includes the mesoscale host simulation, which provides the boundary conditions. The measurements show a dominant influence of the mixing layer evolution at background sites, and therefore both the mesoscale and large-eddy simulation (LES) results are in good agreement with the observed air pollution levels. In contrast, at the high-traffic sites the proximity to emissions and the interactions with the building environment lead to a significantly amplified diurnal variability in pollutant concentrations. These urban road conditions can only be reasonably well represented by CAIRDIO while the meosocale simulation indiscriminately reproduces a typical urban-background profile, resulting in a large positive model bias. Remaining model discrepancies are further addressed by a grid-spacing sensitivity study using offline-nested refined domains. The results show that modeled peak concentrations within street canyons can be further improved by decreasing the horizontal grid spacing down to 10gm, but not beyond. Obviously, the default grid spacing of 40gm is too coarse to represent the specific environment within narrow street canyons. The accuracy gains from the grid refinements are still only modest compared to the remaining model error, which to a large extent can be attributed to uncertainties in the emissions. Finally, the study shows that the proposed gray-scale modeling is a promising downscaling approach for urban air-quality applications. The results, however, also show that aspects other than the actual resolution of flow patterns and numerical effects can determine the simulations at the urban microscale.
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    Implementation of aerosol-cloud interactions in the regional atmosphere-aerosol model COSMO-Muscat(5.0) and evaluation using satellite data
    (Katlenburg-Lindau : Copernicus, 2017) Dipu, Sudhakar; Quaas, Johannes; Wolke, Ralf; Stoll, Jens; Mühlbauer, Andreas; Sourdeval, Odran; Salzmann, Marc; Heinold, Bernd; Tegen, Ina
    The regional atmospheric model Consortium for Small-scale Modeling (COSMO) coupled to the Multi-Scale Chemistry Aerosol Transport model (Muscat) is extended in this work to represent aerosol-cloud interactions. Previously, only one-way interactions (scavenging of aerosol and in-cloud chemistry) and aerosol-radiation interactions were included in this model. The new version allows for a microphysical aerosol effect on clouds. For this, we use the optional two-moment cloud microphysical scheme in COSMO and the online-computed aerosol information for cloud condensation nuclei concentrations (Cccn), replacing the constant Cccn profile. In the radiation scheme, we have implemented a droplet-size-dependent cloud optical depth, allowing now for aerosol-cloud-radiation interactions. To evaluate the models with satellite data, the Cloud Feedback Model Intercomparison Project Observation Simulator Package (COSP) has been implemented. A case study has been carried out to understand the effects of the modifications, where the modified modeling system is applied over the European domain with a horizontal resolution of 0.25°g × g0.25°. To reduce the complexity in aerosol-cloud interactions, only warm-phase clouds are considered. We found that the online-coupled aerosol introduces significant changes for some cloud microphysical properties. The cloud effective radius shows an increase of 9.5g%, and the cloud droplet number concentration is reduced by 21.5g%.