scholarly journals Evaluation of near-tropopause ozone distributions in the Global Modeling Initiative combined stratosphere/troposphere model with ozonesonde data

2008 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1589-1634 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. B. Considine ◽  
J. A. Logan ◽  
M. A. Olsen

Abstract. The NASA Global Modeling Initiative has developed a combined stratosphere/troposphere chemistry and transport model which fully represents the processes governing atmospheric composition near the tropopause. We evaluate model ozone distributions near the tropopause, using two high vertical resolution monthly mean ozone profile climatologies constructed with ozonesonde data, one by averaging on pressure levels and the other relative to the thermal tropopause. Model ozone is high-biased at the SH tropical and NH midlatitude tropopause by ~45% in a 4° latitude × 5° longitude model simulation. Increasing the resolution to 2°×2.5&amp;deg increases the NH tropopause high bias to ~60%, but decreases the tropical tropopause bias to ~30%, an effect of a better-resolved residual circulation. The tropopause ozone biases appear not to be due to an overly vigorous residual circulation or excessive stratosphere/troposphere exchange, but are more likely due to insufficient vertical resolution or excessive vertical diffusion near the tropopause. In the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere, model/measurement intercomparisons are strongly affected by the averaging technique. NH and tropical mean model lower stratospheric biases are <20%. In the upper troposphere, the 2°×2.5&amp;deg simulation exhibits mean high biases of ~20% and~35% during April in the tropics and NH midlatitudes, respectively, compared to the pressure-averaged climatology. However, relative-to-tropopause averaging produces upper troposphere high biases of ~30% and 70% in the tropics and NH midlatitudes. This is because relative-to-tropopause averaging better preserves large cross-tropopause O3 gradients, which are seen in the daily sonde data, but not in daily model profiles. The relative annual cycle of ozone near the tropopause is reproduced very well in the model Northern Hemisphere midlatitudes. In the tropics, the model amplitude of the near-tropopause annual cycle is weak. This is likely due to the annual amplitude of mean vertical upwelling near the tropopause, which analysis suggests is ~30% weaker than in the real atmosphere.

2008 ◽  
Vol 8 (9) ◽  
pp. 2365-2385 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. B. Considine ◽  
J. A. Logan ◽  
M. A. Olsen

Abstract. The NASA Global Modeling Initiative has developed a combined stratosphere/troposphere chemistry and transport model which fully represents the processes governing atmospheric composition near the tropopause. We evaluate model ozone distributions near the tropopause, using two high vertical resolution monthly mean ozone profile climatologies constructed with ozonesonde data, one by averaging on pressure levels and the other relative to the thermal tropopause. At the tropopause, model ozone is high-biased in the SH tropics and NH midlatitudes by ~45% in a 4° latitude ×5° longitude model simulation. Doubling the resolution to 2°×2.5° increases the NH high bias to ~60%, and reduces the tropical bias to ~30%, apparently due to decreased horizontal transport between the tropics and extratropics in the higher-resolution simulation. These ozone biases do not appear to be due to an overly vigorous residual circulation, insufficient convection, or excessive stratosphere/troposphere exchange, and so may be due to insufficient vertical resolution or excessive vertical diffusion near the tropopause. In the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere, model/measurement intercomparisons are strongly affected by the averaging technique. Compared to the pressure-averaged climatology, NH and tropical mean model lower stratospheric biases are >20%. In the upper troposphere, the 2°×2.5° simulation shows mean high biases of ~20% and ~35% during April in the tropics and NH midlatitudes, respectively. This apparently good model/measurement agreement degrades when relative-to-tropopause averages are considered, with upper troposphere high biases of ~30% and 70% in the tropics and NH midlatitudes. This occurs because relative-to-tropopause averaging better preserves the larger cross-tropopause O3 gradients which are seen in the daily sonde data, but not in daily model profiles. Relative-to-tropopause averages therefore more accurately reveal model/measurement discrepancies. The relative annual cycle of ozone near the tropopause is reproduced very well in the model Northern Hemisphere midlatitudes. In the tropics, the model amplitude of the near-tropopause annual cycle is weak. This is likely due to the annual amplitude of mean vertical upwelling near the tropopause, which analysis suggests is ~30% weaker than in the real atmosphere.


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 2397-2423 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvain Mailler ◽  
Laurent Menut ◽  
Dmitry Khvorostyanov ◽  
Myrto Valari ◽  
Florian Couvidat ◽  
...  

Abstract. CHIMERE is a chemistry-transport model designed for regional atmospheric composition. It can be used at a variety of scales from local to continental domains. However, due to the model design and its historical use as a regional model, major limitations had remained, hampering its use at hemispheric scale, due to the coordinate system used for transport as well as to missing processes that are important in regions outside Europe. Most of these limitations have been removed in the CHIMERE-2017 version, allowing its use in any region of the world and at any scale, from the scale of a single urban area up to hemispheric scale, with or without polar regions included. Other important improvements have been made in the treatment of the physical processes affecting aerosols and the emissions of mineral dust. From a computational point of view, the parallelization strategy of the model has also been updated in order to improve model numerical performance and reduce the code complexity. The present article describes all these changes. Statistical scores for a model simulation over continental Europe are presented, and a simulation of the circumpolar transport of volcanic ash plume from the Puyehue volcanic eruption in June 2011 in Chile provides a test case for the new model version at hemispheric scale.


2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (19) ◽  
pp. 12081-12096 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne R. Douglass ◽  
Susan E. Strahan ◽  
Luke D. Oman ◽  
Richard S. Stolarski

Abstract. Constituent evolution for 1990–2015 simulated using the Global Modeling Initiative chemistry and transport model driven by meteorological fields from the Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications version 2 (MERRA-2) is compared with three sources of observations: ground-based column measurements of HNO3 and HCl from two stations in the Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change (NDACC, ∼ 1990–ongoing), profiles of CH4 from the Halogen Occultation Experiment (HALOE) on the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS, 1992–2005), and profiles of N2O from the Microwave Limb Sounder on the Earth Observing System satellite Aura (2005–ongoing). The differences between observed and simulated values are shown to be time dependent, with better agreement after ∼ 2000 compared with the prior decade. Furthermore, the differences between observed and simulated HNO3 and HCl columns are shown to be correlated with each other, suggesting that issues with the simulated transport and mixing cause the differences during the 1990s and that these issues are less important during the later years. Because the simulated fields are related to mean age in the lower stratosphere, we use these comparisons to evaluate the time dependence of mean age. The ongoing NDACC column observations provide critical information necessary to substantiate trends in mean age obtained using fields from MERRA-2 or any other reanalysis products.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 5707-5723
Author(s):  
Mathieu Lachatre ◽  
Sylvain Mailler ◽  
Laurent Menut ◽  
Solène Turquety ◽  
Pasquale Sellitto ◽  
...  

Abstract. Excessive numerical diffusion is one of the major limitations in the representation of long-range transport by chemistry transport models. In the present study, we focus on excessive diffusion in the vertical direction, which has been shown to be a major issue, and we explore three possible ways of addressing this problem: increasing the vertical resolution, using an advection scheme with anti-diffusive properties and more accurately representing the vertical wind. This study was carried out using the CHIMERE chemistry transport model for the 18 March 2012 eruption of Mount Etna, which released about 3 kt of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere in a plume that was observed by satellite instruments (the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer instrument, IASI, and the Ozone Monitoring Instrument, OMI) for several days. The change from the classical Van Leer (1977) scheme to the Després and Lagoutière (1999) anti-diffusive scheme in the vertical direction was shown to provide the largest improvement to model outputs in terms of preserving the thin plume emitted by the volcano. To a lesser extent, the improved representation of the vertical wind field was also shown to reduce plume dispersion. Both of these changes helped to reduce vertical diffusion in the model as much as a brute-force approach (increasing vertical resolution).


2006 ◽  
Vol 6 (6) ◽  
pp. 11727-11743 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. A. D. Richards ◽  
Q. Li ◽  
K. W. Bowman ◽  
J. R. Worden ◽  
S. S. Kulawik ◽  
...  

Abstract. We present results from the first assimilation of carbon monoxide (CO) observations from the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) into a global three-dimensional (3-D) chemistry and transport model (CTM). A sequential sub-optimal Kalman filter assimilation scheme (Khattatov et al., 2000) was applied to assimilate TES CO profiles during November 2004 into the GEOS-Chem global 3-D CTM. The assimilation results were compared with MOPITT and MOZAIC observations. The assimilation significantly improves model simulation of CO in the middle to upper troposphere, where the MOPITT versus model bias was reduced by up to two-thirds. Assimilation results show higher levels of CO in the southern tropics, consistent with MOPITT observations. We find good agreement between the TES assimilated model estimates of CO and in situ measurements from the MOZAIC program, which shows a negative bias of up to 10 ppbv in middle and upper tropospheric TES CO. The results demonstrate how assimilation can be used for non-coincident validation of TES CO profile retrievals.


2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (24) ◽  
pp. 12133-12154 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Diallo ◽  
B. Legras ◽  
A. Chédin

Abstract. The Brewer-Dobson mean circulation and its variability are investigated in the ERA-Interim over the period 1989-2010 by using an off-line Lagrangian transport model driven by analysed winds and heating rates. At low and mid-latitudes, the mean age of air in the lower stratosphere is in good agreement with ages derived from aircraft, high altitude balloon and satellite observations of long-lived tracers. At high latitude and in the upper stratosphere, we find, however that the ERA-Interim ages exhibit an old bias, typically of one to two years. The age spectrum exhibits a long tail except in the low tropical stratosphere which is modulated by the annual cycle of the tropical upwelling. The distribution of ages and its variability is consistent with the existence of two separate branches, shallow and deep, of the Brewer-Dobson circulation. Both branches are modulated by the tropical upwelling and the shallow branch is also modulated by the subtropical barrier. The variability of the mean age is analysed through a decomposition in terms of annual cycle, QBO, ENSO and trend. The annual modulation is the dominating signal in the lower stratosphere and is maximum at latitudes greater than 50° in both hemispheres with oldest ages at the end of the winter. The phase of the annual modulation is also reversed between below and above 25 km. The maximum amplitude of the QBO modulation is of about 0.5 yr and is mostly concentrated within the tropics between 25 and 35 km. It lags the QBO wind at 30 hPa by about 8 months. The ENSO signal is small and limited to the lower northen stratosphere. The age trend over the 1989–2010 period, according to this ERA-Interim dataset, is significant and negative, of the order of −0.3 to −0.5 yr dec−1, within the lower stratosphere in the Southern Hemisphere and south of 40° N in the Northern Hemisphere below 25 km. The age trend is positive (of the order of 0.3 yr dec−1) in the mid stratosphere but there is no region of consistent significance. This suggests that the shallow and deep Brewer-Dobson circulations may evolve in opposite directions. Finally, we find that the long lasting influence of the Pinatubo eruption can be seen on the age of air from June 1991 until the end of 1993 and can bias the statistics encompassing this period.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaolu Yan ◽  
Paul Konopka ◽  
Felix Ploeger ◽  
Aurélien Podglajen ◽  
Jonathon S. Wright ◽  
...  

Abstract. Transport of pollutants into the stratosphere via the Asian summer monsoon (ASM) or North American summer monsoon (NASM) may affect the atmospheric composition and climate both locally and globally. We identify and study the robust characteristics of transport from the ASM and NASM regions to the stratosphere using the Lagrangian chemistry transport model CLaMS as driven by the ERA-Interim and MERRA-2 reanalyses. In particular, we investigate the relative influences of the ASM and NASM on stratospheric composition, the transport pathways by which these influences are effected, and the quantitative contributions and efficiencies of transport from different altitudes in these two monsoon regions to the stratosphere. We release artificial tracers in several vertical layers from the middle troposphere to the lower stratosphere in both ASM and NASM source regions during July and August 2010–2013 and track their evolution until the following summer. We find that the magnitude of transport from the ASM and NASM regions to the tropical stratosphere, and even to the Southern Hemispheric stratosphere, is higher when the tracers are released at the 350–360 K level. For tracers released close to the tropopause (370–380 K), transport is primarily into the Northern Hemispheric stratosphere. Results for different vertical layers or air origin reveal two transport pathways from the upper troposphere over the ASM and NASM regions to the tropical pipe: (i) quasi-horizontal transport to the tropics below the tropopause followed by ascent to the stratosphere via tropical upwelling, and (ii) ascent into the stratosphere inside the ASM/NASM followed by quasi-horizontal transport to the tropical lower stratosphere and tropical pipe. The tropical pathway (i) is faster than the monsoon pathway (ii), particularly in the ascending branch. Ultimately, the abundance of air in the tropical pipe that originates in the ASM upper troposphere (350–360 K, ~ 5 %) is comparable to that of air ascending directly from the tropics ten months after the release of the source tracers. By contrast, the air mass contributions from the ASM to the tropical pipe are about three times larger than the corresponding contribution from the NASM (~ 1.5 %). The transport efficiency into the tropical pipe, normalized by the mass of the domain, is greatest from the ASM region at 370–380 K. Transport from the ASM to the tropical pipe is almost twice as efficient as transport from the NASM or tropics to the tropical pipe. Although the contribution from the NASM to the stratosphere is less than that from either the ASM or the tropics, the transport efficiency from the NASM is comparable to that from the tropics.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvain Mailler ◽  
Laurent Menut ◽  
Dmitry Khvorostyanov ◽  
Myrto Valari ◽  
Florian Couvidat ◽  
...  

Abstract. CHIMERE is a chemistry-transport model initially designed for box-modelling of regional atmospheric composition. In the past decade, it has been converted into a 3D eulerian model that could be used at a variety of scales from local to continental domains. However, due to the model design and its historic use as a regional model, major limitations had remained, prohibiting its use at hemispheric scale, due to the coordinate system used for transport as well as to missing processes that are important in regions outside Europe. Most of these limitations have been lifted in the CHIMERE-2016 version, allowing its use in any region of the world and at any scale, from the scale of a single urban area up to hemispheric scale, including or not polar regions. Other important improvements have been brought in the treatment of the physical processes affecting aerosols and the emissions of mineral dust. From a computational point of view, the parallelization strategy of the model has also been improved in order to improve model numerical performance. The present article describes all these changes. Scores for a model simulation over continental Europe are presented, and a simulation of the circumpolar transport of volcanic ash plume from the Puyehue volcanic eruption in June 2011 in Chile provides a test case for the new model version at hemispheric scale.


2008 ◽  
Vol 8 (14) ◽  
pp. 4061-4068 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Cariolle ◽  
M. J. Evans ◽  
M. P. Chipperfield ◽  
N. Butkovskaya ◽  
A. Kukui ◽  
...  

Abstract. We have studied the impact of the recently observed reaction NO+HO2→HNO3 on atmospheric chemistry. A pressure and temperature-dependent parameterisation of this minor channel of the NO+HO2→NO2+OH reaction has been included in both a 2-D stratosphere-troposphere model and a 3-D tropospheric chemical transport model (CTM). Significant effects on the nitrogen species and hydroxyl radical concentrations are found throughout the troposphere, with the largest percentage changes occurring in the tropical upper troposphere (UT). Including the reaction leads to a reduction in NOx everywhere in the troposphere, with the largest decrease of 25% in the tropical and Southern Hemisphere UT. The tropical UT also has a corresponding large increase in HNO3 of 25%. OH decreases throughout the troposphere with the largest reduction of over 20% in the tropical UT. The mean global decrease in OH is around 13%, which is very large compared to the impact that typical photochemical revisions have on this modelled quantity. This OH decrease leads to an increase in CH4 lifetime of 5%. Due to the impact of decreased NOx on the OH:HO2 partitioning, modelled HO2 actually increases in the tropical UT on including the new reaction. The impact on tropospheric ozone is a decrease in the range 5 to 12%, with the largest impact in the tropics and Southern Hemisphere. Comparison with observations shows that in the region of largest changes, i.e. the tropical UT, the inclusion of the new reaction tends to degrade the model agreement. Elsewhere the model comparisons are not able to critically assess the impact of including this reaction. Only small changes are calculated in the minor species distributions in the stratosphere.


2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (17) ◽  
pp. 8929-8943 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. A. Søvde ◽  
C. R. Hoyle ◽  
G. Myhre ◽  
I. S. A. Isaksen

Abstract. Recent laboratory measurements have shown the existence of a HNO3 forming branch of the HO2 + NO reaction. This reaction is the main source of tropospheric O3, through the subsequent photolysis of NO2, as well as being a major source of OH. The branching of the reaction to HNO3 reduces the formation of these species significantly, affecting O3 abundances, radiative forcing and the oxidation capacity of the troposphere. The Oslo CTM2, a three-dimensional chemistry transport model, is used to calculate atmospheric composition and trends with and without the new reaction branch. Results for the present day atmosphere, when both temperature and pressure effects on the branching ratio are accounted for, show an 11 % reduction in the calculated tropospheric burden of O3, with the main contribution from the tropics. An increase of the global, annual mean methane lifetime by 10.9 %, resulting from a 14.1 % reduction in the global, annual mean OH concentration is also found. Comparisons with measurements show that including the new branch improves the modelled O3 in the Oslo CTM2, but that it is not possible to conclude whether the NOy distribution improves. We model an approximately 11 % reduction in the tropical tropospheric O3 increase since pre-industrial times, and a 4 % reduction of the increase in total tropospheric burden. Also, an 8 % decrease in the trend of OH concentrations is calculated, when the new branch is accounted for. The radiative forcing due to changes in O3 over the industrial era was calculated as 0.33 W m−2, reducing to 0.26 W m−2 with the new reaction branch. These results are significant, and it is important that this reaction branching is confirmed by other laboratory groups.


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