You are here:
Simulation of the Indirect Radiative Forcing of Climate Due to Aerosols by the Two-Way Coupled WRF-CMAQ over the Eastern United States
Citation:
YU, S., R. MATHUR, J. E. PLEIM, D. C. WONG, A. G. CARLTON, S. J. ROSELLE, S. T. RAO, AND Y. Shao. Simulation of the Indirect Radiative Forcing of Climate Due to Aerosols by the Two-Way Coupled WRF-CMAQ over the Eastern United States. Chapter 96, Douw G. Steyn & Silvia Trini Castelli (ed.), NATO/SPS/Intrenational Technical Meeting on Air Pollution Modeling and its Application. Springer Netherlands, , Netherlands, Series C :579-583, (2011).
Impact/Purpose:
The National Exposure Research Laboratory′s (NERL′s) Atmospheric Modeling and Analysis Division (AMAD) conducts research in support of EPA′s mission to protect human health and the environment. AMAD′s research program is engaged in developing and evaluating predictive atmospheric models on all spatial and temporal scales for forecasting the Nation′s air quality and for assessing changes in air quality and air pollutant exposures, as affected by changes in ecosystem management and regulatory decisions. AMAD is responsible for providing a sound scientific and technical basis for regulatory policies based on air quality models to improve ambient air quality. The models developed by AMAD are being used by EPA, NOAA, and the air pollution community in understanding and forecasting not only the magnitude of the air pollution problem, but also in developing emission control policies and regulations for air quality improvements.
Description:
In this study, the shortwave cloud forcing (SWCF) and longwave cloud forcing (LWCF) are estimated with the newly developed two-way coupled WRF-CMAQ over the eastern United States. Preliminary indirect aerosol forcing has been successfully implemented in WRF-CMAQ. The comparisons with the observed PM2.5 at the AIRNow sites indicates that the models captured a majority of observed daily PM2.5 within a factor of 2, but generally underestimated the observations in the high PM2.5 concentration range. The domain means of CERES satellite observations, WRF-CMAQ/CAM and WRF-CMAQ/RRTMg for SWCF (LWCF) are -48.1 (31.9), -31.9 (22.6), -19.8 (15.5) watts m.-2, respectively. This means that the WRF-CMAQ model generally underestimated the cloud field for the 12-km resolution simulations.