Coupling aerosol optics to the chemical transport model MATCH (v5.5.0) and aerosol dynamics module SALSA (v1)

Abstract

Modelling aerosol optical properties is a notoriously difficult task due to the particles' complex morphologies and compositions. Yet aerosols and their optical properties are important for Earth system modelling and remote sensing applications. Operational optics models often make drastic and non realistic approximations regarding morphological properties, which can introduce errors. In this study a new aerosol optics model is implemented, in which more realistic morphologies and mixing states are assumed, especially for black carbon aerosols. The model includes both external and internal mixing of all chemical species, it treats externally mixed black carbon as fractal aggregates, and it accounts for inhomogeneous internal mixing of black carbon by use of a novel "core-grey shell" model. Simulated results of radiative fluxes, backscattering coefficients and the Ångström exponent from the new optics model are compared with results from another model simulating particles as externally mixed homogeneous spheres. To gauge the impact on the optical properties from the new optics model, the known and important effects from using aerosol dynamics serves as a reference. The results show that using a more detailed description of particle morphology and mixing states influences the optical properties to the same degree as aerosol dynamics. This is an important finding suggesting that over-simplified optics models coupled to a chemical transport model can introduce considerable errors; this can strongly effect simulations of radiative fluxes in Earth-system models, and it can compromise the use of remote sensing observations of aerosols in model evaluations and chemical data assimilation.