scholarly journals Multiphase processes in the EC-Earth Earth System model and their relevance to the atmospheric oxalate, sulfate, and iron cycles

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stelios Myriokefalitakis ◽  
Elisa Bergas-Massó ◽  
María Gonçalves-Ageitos ◽  
Carlos Pérez García-Pando ◽  
Twan van Noije ◽  
...  

Abstract. Understanding how multiphase processes affect the iron-containing aerosol cycle is key to predict ocean biogeochemistry changes and hence the feedback effects on climate. For this work, the EC-Earth Earth system model in its climate-chemistry configuration is used to simulate the global atmospheric oxalate (OXL), sulfate (SO42−), and iron (Fe) cycles, after incorporating a comprehensive representation of the multiphase chemistry in cloud droplets and aerosol water. The model considers a detailed gas-phase chemistry scheme, all major aerosol components, and the partitioning of gases in aerosol and atmospheric water phases. The dissolution of Fe-containing aerosols accounts kinetically for the solution’s acidity, oxalic acid, and irradiation. Aerosol acidity is explicitly calculated in the model, both for accumulation and coarse modes, accounting for thermodynamic processes involving inorganic and crustal species from sea salt and dust. Simulations for present-day conditions (2000–2014) have been carried out with both EC-Earth and the atmospheric composition component of the model in standalone mode driven by meteorological fields from ECMWF’s ERA-Interim reanalysis. The calculated global budgets are presented and the links between the 1) aqueous-phase processes, 2) aerosol dissolution, and 3) atmospheric composition, are demonstrated and quantified. The model results are supported by comparison to available observations. We obtain an average global OXL net chemical production of 12.61 ± 0.06 Tg yr−1 in EC-Earth, with glyoxal being by far the most important precursor of oxalic acid. In comparison to the ERA-Interim simulation, differences in atmospheric dynamics as well as the simulated weaker oxidizing capacity in EC-Earth result overall in a ~30 % lower OXL source. On the other hand, the more explicit representation of the aqueous-phase chemistry in EC-Earth compared to the previous versions of the model leads to an overall ~20 % higher sulfate production, but still well correlated with atmospheric observations. The total Fe dissolution rate in EC-Earth is calculated at 0.806 ± 0.014 Tg Fe yr−1 and is added to the primary dissolved Fe (DFe) sources from dust and combustion aerosols in the model (0.072 ± 0.001 Tg Fe yr−1). The simulated DFe concentrations show a satisfactory comparison with available observations, indicating an atmospheric burden of ∼0.007 Tg Fe, and overall resulting in an atmospheric deposition flux into the global ocean of 0.376 ± 0.005 Tg Fe yr−1, well within the range reported in the literature. All in all, this work is a first step towards the development of EC-Earth into an Earth System Model with fully interactive bioavailable atmospheric Fe inputs to the marine biogeochemistry component of the model.

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 3301-3320 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. B. Rodgers ◽  
J. Lin ◽  
T. L. Frölicher

Abstract. Marine ecosystems are increasingly stressed by human-induced changes. Marine ecosystem drivers that contribute to stressing ecosystems – including warming, acidification, deoxygenation and perturbations to biological productivity – can co-occur in space and time, but detecting their trends is complicated by the presence of noise associated with natural variability in the climate system. Here we use large initial-condition ensemble simulations with an Earth system model under a historical/RCP8.5 (representative concentration pathway 8.5) scenario over 1950–2100 to consider emergence characteristics for the four individual and combined drivers. Using a 1-standard-deviation (67% confidence) threshold of signal to noise to define emergence with a 30-year trend window, we show that ocean acidification emerges much earlier than other drivers, namely during the 20th century over most of the global ocean. For biological productivity, the anthropogenic signal does not emerge from the noise over most of the global ocean before the end of the 21st century. The early emergence pattern for sea surface temperature in low latitudes is reversed from that of subsurface oxygen inventories, where emergence occurs earlier in the Southern Ocean. For the combined multiple-driver field, 41% of the global ocean exhibits emergence for the 2005–2014 period, and 63% for the 2075–2084 period. The combined multiple-driver field reveals emergence patterns by the end of this century that are relatively high over much of the Southern Ocean, North Pacific, and Atlantic, but relatively low over the tropics and the South Pacific. For the case of two drivers, the tropics including habitats of coral reefs emerges earliest, with this driven by the joint effects of acidification and warming. It is precisely in the regions with pronounced emergence characteristics where marine ecosystems may be expected to be pushed outside of their comfort zone determined by the degree of natural background variability to which they are adapted. The results underscore the importance of sustained multi-decadal observing systems for monitoring multiple ecosystems drivers.


2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (5) ◽  
pp. 2223-2254
Author(s):  
Katherine A. Crichton ◽  
Andy Ridgwell ◽  
Daniel J. Lunt ◽  
Alex Farnsworth ◽  
Paul N. Pearson

Abstract. Since the middle Miocene (15 Ma, million years ago), the Earth's climate has undergone a long-term cooling trend, characterised by a reduction in ocean temperatures of up to 7–8 ∘C. The causes of this cooling are primarily thought to be due to tectonic plate movements driving changes in large-scale ocean circulation patterns, and hence heat redistribution, in conjunction with a drop in atmospheric greenhouse gas forcing (and attendant ice-sheet growth and feedback). In this study, we assess the potential to constrain the evolving patterns of global ocean circulation and cooling over the last 15 Ma by assimilating a variety of marine sediment proxy data in an Earth system model. We do this by first compiling surface and benthic ocean temperature and benthic carbon-13 (δ13C) data in a series of seven time slices spaced at approximately 2.5 Myr intervals. We then pair this with a corresponding series of tectonic and climate boundary condition reconstructions in the cGENIE (“muffin” release) Earth system model, including alternative possibilities for an open vs. closed Central American Seaway (CAS) from 10 Ma onwards. In the cGENIE model, we explore uncertainty in greenhouse gas forcing and the magnitude of North Pacific to North Atlantic salinity flux adjustment required in the model to create an Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) of a specific strength, via a series of 12 (one for each tectonic reconstruction) 2D parameter ensembles. Each ensemble member is then tested against the observed global temperature and benthic δ13C patterns. We identify that a relatively high CO2 equivalent forcing of 1120 ppm is required at 15 Ma in cGENIE to reproduce proxy temperature estimates in the model, noting that this CO2 forcing is dependent on the cGENIE model's climate sensitivity and that it incorporates the effects of all greenhouse gases. We find that reproducing the observed long-term cooling trend requires a progressively declining greenhouse gas forcing in the model. In parallel to this, the strength of the AMOC increases with time despite a reduction in the salinity of the surface North Atlantic over the cooling period, attributable to falling intensity of the hydrological cycle and to lowering polar temperatures, both caused by CO2-driven global cooling. We also find that a closed CAS from 10 Ma to present shows better agreement between benthic δ13C patterns and our particular series of model configurations and data. A final outcome of our analysis is a pronounced ca. 1.5 ‰ decline occurring in atmospheric (and ca. 1 ‰ ocean surface) δ13C that could be used to inform future δ13C-based proxy reconstructions.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben A. Ward ◽  
Jamie D. Wilson ◽  
Ros M. Death ◽  
Fanny M. Monteiro ◽  
Andrew Yool ◽  
...  

Abstract. We present an extension to the cGENIE Earth System model that explicitly accounts for the growth and interaction of an arbitrary number of plankton species. The new package (ECOGEM) replaces the implicit, flux-based, parameterisation of the plankton community currently employed, with explicitly resolved plankton populations and ecological dynamics. In ECOGEM, any number of plankton species, with ecophysiological traits (e.g. growth and grazing rates) assigned according to organism size and functional group (e.g. phytoplankton and zooplankton) can be incorporated at run-time. We illustrate the capability of the marine ecology enabled Earth system model (EcoGENIE) by comparing results from one configuration of ECOGEM (with eight generic phytoplankton and zooplankton size classes) to climatological and seasonal observations. We find that the new ecological components of the model show reasonable agreement with both global-scale climatological and local-scale seasonal data. We also compare EcoGENIE results to a the existing biogeochemical incarnation of cGENIE. We find that the resulting global-scale distributions of phosphate, iron, dissolved inorganic carbon, alkalinity and oxygen are similar for both iterations of the model. A slight deterioration in some fields in EcoGENIE (relative to the data) is observed, although we make no attempt to re-tune the overall marine cycling of carbon and nutrients here. The increased capabilities of EcoGENIE in this regard will enable future exploration of the ecological community on much longer timescales than have previously been examined in global ocean ecosystem models and particularly for past climates and global biogeochemical cycles.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 4241-4267 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben A. Ward ◽  
Jamie D. Wilson ◽  
Ros M. Death ◽  
Fanny M. Monteiro ◽  
Andrew Yool ◽  
...  

Abstract. We present an extension to the carbon-centric Grid Enabled Integrated Earth system model (cGEnIE) that explicitly accounts for the growth and interaction of an arbitrary number of plankton species. The new package (ECOGEM) replaces the implicit, flux-based parameterisation of the plankton community currently employed, with explicitly resolved plankton populations and ecological dynamics. In ECOGEM, any number of plankton species, with ecophysiological traits (e.g. growth and grazing rates) assigned according to organism size and functional group (e.g. phytoplankton and zooplankton) can be incorporated at runtime. We illustrate the capability of the marine ecology enabled Earth system model (EcoGEnIE) by comparing results from one configuration of ECOGEM (with eight generic phytoplankton and zooplankton size classes) to climatological and seasonal observations. We find that the new ecological components of the model show reasonable agreement with both global-scale climatological and local-scale seasonal data. We also compare EcoGEnIE results to the existing biogeochemical incarnation of cGEnIE. We find that the resulting global-scale distributions of phosphate, iron, dissolved inorganic carbon, alkalinity, and oxygen are similar for both iterations of the model. A slight deterioration in some fields in EcoGEnIE (relative to the data) is observed, although we make no attempt to re-tune the overall marine cycling of carbon and nutrients here. The increased capabilities of EcoGEnIE in this regard will enable future exploration of the ecological community on much longer timescales than have previously been examined in global ocean ecosystem models and particularly for past climates and global biogeochemical cycles.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (11) ◽  
pp. 4209-4225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaomeng Huang ◽  
Qiang Tang ◽  
Yuheng Tseng ◽  
Yong Hu ◽  
Allison H. Baker ◽  
...  

Abstract. In the Community Earth System Model (CESM), the ocean model is computationally expensive for high-resolution grids and is often the least scalable component for high-resolution production experiments. The major bottleneck is that the barotropic solver scales poorly at high core counts. We design a new barotropic solver to accelerate the high-resolution ocean simulation. The novel solver adopts a Chebyshev-type iterative method to reduce the global communication cost in conjunction with an effective block preconditioner to further reduce the iterations. The algorithm and its computational complexity are theoretically analyzed and compared with other existing methods. We confirm the significant reduction of the global communication time with a competitive convergence rate using a series of idealized tests. Numerical experiments using the CESM 0.1° global ocean model show that the proposed approach results in a factor of 1.7 speed-up over the original method with no loss of accuracy, achieving 10.5 simulated years per wall-clock day on 16 875 cores.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
João Teixeira ◽  
Fiona O'Connor ◽  
Nadine Unger ◽  
Apostolos Voulgarakis

<p>Fires constitutes a key process in the Earth system (ES), being driven by climate as well as affecting the climate by changing atmospheric composition and its impact on the terrestrial carbon cycle. However, global modelling studies on the effects of fires on atmospheric composition, radiative forcing and climate have been very limited to date. The aim of this work is the development and application of a fully coupled vegetation-fire-chemistry-climate ES model in order to quantify the impacts of fire variability on atmospheric composition-climate interactions in the present day. For this, the INFERNO fire model is coupled to the atmosphere-only configuration of the UK’s Earth System Model (UKESM). This fire-atmosphere interaction through atmospheric chemistry and aerosols allows for fire emissions to feedback on radiation and clouds changing weather which can consequently feedback on the atmospheric drivers of fire. Additionally, INFERNO was updated based on recent developments in the literature to improve the representation of human/economic factors in the anthropogenic ignition and suppression of fire. This work presents an assessment of the effects of interactive fire coupling on atmospheric composition and climate compared to the standard UKESM1 configuration which has prescribed fire emissions. Results show a satisfactory performance when using the fire-atmosphere coupling (the “online” version of the model) when compared to the offline UKESM that uses prescribed fire. The model can reproduce observed present day global fire emissions of carbon monoxide (CO) and aerosols, despite underestimating the global average burnt area. However, at a regional scale there is an overestimation of fire emissions over Africa due to the miss-representation of the underlying vegetation types and an underestimation over Equatorial Asia due to a lack of representation of peat fires.</p>


2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (7) ◽  
pp. 840-859 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lori T. Sentman ◽  
John P. Dunne ◽  
Ronald J. Stouffer ◽  
John P. Krasting ◽  
J. R. Toggweiler ◽  
...  

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 451-481 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Arndt ◽  
P. Regnier ◽  
Y. Goddéris ◽  
Y. Donnadieu

Abstract. We present a new version of the coupled Earth system model GEOCLIM. The new release, GEOCLIM reloaded (v 1.0), links the existing atmosphere and weathering modules to a novel, temporally and spatially resolved model of the global ocean circulation, which provides a physical framework for a mechanistic description of the marine biogeochemical dynamics of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and oxygen. The ocean model is also coupled to a fully formulated, vertically resolved diagenetic model. GEOCLIM reloaded is thus a unique tool to investigate the short- and long-term feedbacks between climatic conditions, continental inputs, ocean biogeochemical dynamics and diagenesis. A complete and detailed description of the resulting Earth system model and its new features is first provided. The performance of GEOCLIM reloaded is then evaluated by comparing steady-state simulation under present-day conditions with a comprehensive set of oceanic data and existing global estimates of bio-element cycling in the pelagic and benthic compartments.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ka Ming Fung ◽  
Maria Val Martin ◽  
Amos P. K. Tai

Abstract. Global ammonia (NH3) emission is expected to continue to rise due to intensified fertilization for growing food to satisfy the increasing demand worldwide. Previous studies focused mainly on estimating the land-to-atmosphere NH3 injection but seldom addressed the other side of the bidirectional nitrogen exchange – deposition. Ignoring this significant input source of soil mineral nitrogen may lead to an underestimation of NH3 emissions from natural sources. Here, we used an Earth system model to quantify NH3-induced changes in atmospheric composition and the consequent impacts on the Earth's radiative budget and biosphere, as well as the impacts of deposition on NH3 emissions from the land surface. We implemented a new scheme into the Community Land Model version 5 (CLM5) of the Community Earth System Model version 2 (CESM2) to estimate the volatilization of ammonium salt (NH4+) associated with synthetical fertilizers into gaseous NH3. We further parameterized the amount of emitted NH3 captured in the plant canopy to derive a more accurate quantity of NH3 that escapes to the atmosphere. Our modified CLM5 estimated that 11 Tg-N yr−1 of global NH3 emission is attributable to synthetic fertilizers. Interactively coupling terrestrial NH3 emissions to atmospheric chemistry simulations by the Community Atmospheric Model version 4 with chemistry (CAM4-chem), we found that such emissions favor the formation and deposition of NH4+ aerosol, which in turn disrupts the aerosol radiative effect and enhances soil NH3 volatilization in regions downwind of fertilized croplands. Our fully-coupled simulations showed that global-total NH3 emission is enhanced by nitrogen deposition by 2.4 Tg-N yr−1, when compared to the baseline case with 2000-level fertilization but without deposition- induced enhancements. In synergy with observations and emission inventories, our work provides a useful tool for stakeholders to evaluate the intertwined relations between agricultural trends, fertilize use, NH3 emission, atmospheric aerosols, and climate, so as to derive optimal strategies for securing both food production and environmental sustainability.


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