Numerical Studies of the Lifecycle of Aerosols and Their Interactions with Clouds
EMSL Project ID
49096
Abstract
A major PNNL research effort, funded through DOE's Atmospheric System Research (ASR) Program, focuses on knowledge gaps in aerosol effects on climate, including: • Aerosol aging and its impact on optical and cloud-nucleating properties; • Environmental conditions and aerosol effects in the lifecycle of clouds; • Cloud processing of aerosols including wet removal and transformation. The project is based on a "measurements-to-models" approach (Ghan and Schwartz, 2007) in which data are used to improve the understanding of important aerosol and cloud physical processes and their spatial variability, evaluate and advance aerosol and cloud process modules, and develop parameterizations for the Community Atmosphere Model (version 5, CAM5), as well as for next generation climate models including DOE's Accelerated Climate Model for Energy (ACME). This proposal requests computational resources to support research focusing on challenges that: 1) Improve the representation of the aerosol lifecycle in models, particularly those processes associated with secondary organic aerosols (SOA) and the aerosol mixing state. This effort involves assessing the level of complexity needed to adequately model SOA and the aerosol mixing state in relation with other aerosol processes and quantifying their scale dependency in models. 2) Improve the representation of the lifecycle of convective clouds in models, including how large-scale environmental conditions and local processes such as land-atmosphere interactions, boundary layer mixing, and aerosol properties affect the initiation, properties, organization, and lifetime of convective clouds and precipitation. These processes are not treated adequately by climate models. A hierarchy of simulations, ranging from local to global spatial scales, will be performed that form benchmark studies needed to understand important atmospheric processes as well as develop improved parameterizations for climate models.
Project Details
Project type
Exploratory Research
Start Date
2015-10-15
End Date
2016-09-30
Status
Closed
Released Data Link
Team
Principal Investigator
Co-Investigator(s)
Team Members
Related Publications
Fast JD, LK Berg, K Zhang, RC Easter, Jr, RA Ferrare, J Hair, CA Hostetler, Y Liu, I Ortega, A Sedlacek, JE Shilling, MKB Shrivastava, SR Springston, JM Tomlinson, RM Volkamer, JM Wilson, RA Zaveri, and A Zelenyuk-Imre. 2016. "Model Representations of Aerosol Layers Transported from North America over the Atlantic Ocean during the Two-Column Aerosol Project." Journal of Geophysical Research. D. (Atmospheres) 121(16):9814-9848. doi:10.1002/2016JD025248