High Resolution Aerosol Modeling: Decadal Changes in Radiative Forcing

摘要

The Atmospheric Science Division of LLNL has performed high-resolution calculations of direct sulfate forcing using a DOE - provided computer resource at NERSC. We integrated our global chemistry-aerosol model (IMPACT) with the LLNL high-resolution global climate model (horizontal resolution as high as 100 km) to examine the temporal evolution of sulfate forcing since 1950. We note that all previous assessments of sulfate forcing reported in IPCC (2001) were based on global models with coarse spatial resolutions (approx.300 km or even coarser). However, the short lifetime of aerosols (approx. days) results in large spatial and temporal variations of radiative forcing by sulfate. As a result, global climate models with coarse resolutions do not accurately simulate sulfate forcing on regional scales. It requires much finer spatial resolutions in order to address the effects of regional anthropogenic SO2 emissions on the global atmosphere as well as the effects of long-range transport of sulfate aerosols on the regional climate forcing. By taking advantage of the tera-scale computer resources at NERSC, we simulated the historic direct sulfate forcing at much finer spatial resolutions than ever attempted before. Furthermore, we performed high-resolution chemistry simulations and saved monthly averaged oxidant fields, which will be used in subsequent simulations of sulfate aerosol formation and their radiative impact.