Cloud and Chemical Pathway Characterization of the Nonlinear Response of Sulfur Deposition and Sulfate Air Concentrations to Changes in SO2 Emissions in the RADM

摘要

A specially instrumented diagnostic version of the RADM/EM, called the Comprehensive Sulfate Tracking Model (COMSTM), has been developed to help characterize and quantify the nature of the nonlinearity. The COMSTM tags the sulfate in the model by chemical pathway and cloud-type pathway of origin. This allows the authors to estimate the strength and spatial extent of the nonlinearity in each sulfate production pathway, and the contributions of each pathway to the total sulfate deposition. Thus, the model's overall nonlinear response may be broken down into its characteristic components. The same approach may be used to characterize the nonlinearity in relationship to atmospheric sulfate aerosol.