Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot Gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

HTTPS

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Inline Coupling of Simple and Complex Chemistry Modules Within The Global Weather Forecast Model FIM (fim-chem V1)

Abstract

The global Flow-following finite-volume Icosahedral Model (FIM), which was developed in the Global Systems Laboratory of NOAA/ESRL, has been coupled inline with aerosol and gas-phase chemistry schemes of different complexity using the chemistry and aerosol packages from WRF-Chem v3.7, named as FIM-Chem v1. The three chemistry schemes include 1) the simple aerosol modules from the Goddard Chemistry Aerosol Radiation and Transport model that includes only simplified sulfur chemistry, bulk aerosols, and sectional dust and sea salt modules (GOCART); 2) the photochemical gas-phase mechanism RACM coupled to GOCART to determine the impact of more realistic gas-phase chemistry on the GOCART aerosols simulations (RACM_ GOCART); and 3) a further sophistication within the aerosol modules by replacing GOCART with a modal aerosol scheme that includes secondary organic aerosols (SOA) based on the VBS approach (RACM_SOA_VBS). FIM-Chem is able to simulate aerosol, gas-phase chemical species and SOA at various spatial resolutions with different levels of complexity and quantify the impact of aerosol on numerical weather predictions (NWP). We compare the results of RACM_ GOCART and GOCART schemes which uses the default climatological model fields for OH, H2O2, and NO3. We find significant reductions of sulfate that are on the order of 40 % to 80 % over the eastern US and are up to 40 % near the Beijing region over China when using the RACM_GOCART scheme. We also evaluate the model performance by comparing with the Atmospheric Tomography Mission (ATom-1) aircraft measurements in 2016 summer. FIM-Chem shows good performance in capturing the aerosol and gas-phase tracers. The model predicted vertical profiles of biomass burning plumes and dust plumes off the western Africa are also reproduced reasonably well.

Article / Publication Data
Active/Online
YES
Status
EARLY ONLINE RELEASE
Available Metadata
DOI ↗
Early Online Release
May 10, 2021
Fiscal Year
Peer Reviewed
YES
Publication Name
Geoscientific Model Development
Published On
January 20, 2022
Publisher Name
European Geosciences Union
Print Volume
15
Issue
2
Submitted On
April 07, 2021
Project Type
LAB SUPPORTED
URL ↗

Authors

Authors who have authored or contributed to this publication.

  • Li (Kate) Zhang - lead Gsl
    Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder
    NOAA/Global Systems Laboratory
  • Georg A. Grell - second Gsl
    Federal
  • Ravan Ahmadov - fourth Gsl
    Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder
    NOAA/Global Systems Laboratory