Modeling and analysis of aerosol processes in an interactive chemistry general circulation model

Abstract

An "online" aerosol dynamics and chemistry module is included in the Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique general circulation model (LMDZ), so that the chemical species are advected at each dynamical time step and evolve through chemical and physical processes that have been parameterized consistently with the meteorology. These processes include anthropogenic and biogenic emissions, over 50 gas/aqueous phase chemical reactions, transport due to advection, vertical diffusion and convection, dry deposition and wet scavenging. We have introduced a size-resolved representation of aerosols which undergo various processes such as coagulation, nucleation and dry and wet scavenging. The model considers 16 prognostic tracers: water vapor, liquid water, dimethyl sulfide (DMS), hydrogen sulfide (H 2 S), dimethyl sulphoxide (DMSO), methanesulphonic acid (MSA), sulfur dioxide (SO 2), nitrogen oxides (NO x), carbon monoxide (CO), nitric acid (HNO 3 ozone (O 3), hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2), sulfate mass and number for Aitken and accumulation modes. The scheme accounts for two-way interactions between tropospheric chemistry and aerosols. The oxidants and chemical species fields that represent the sulfate aerosol formation are evolved interactively with the model dynamics. A detailed description on the coupled climate-chemistry interactive module is presented with the evaluation of chemical species in winter and summer seasons. Aqueous phase reactions in cloud accounted for 71% of sulfate production rate, while only 45% of the sulfate burden in the troposphere is derived from in-cloud oxidation. Copyright 2007 by the American Geophysical Union.