Tie Dai

Improvement of aerosol optical properties modeling over Eastern Asia with MODIS AOD assimilation in a global non-hydrostatic icosahedral aerosol transport model

A new global aerosol assimilation system adopting a more complex icosahedral grid configuration is developed. Sensitivity tests for the assimilation system are performed utilizing satellite retrieved aerosol optical depth (AOD) from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), and the results over Eastern Asia are analyzed. The assimilated results are validated through independent Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) observations. Our results reveal that the ensemble and local patch sizes have little effect on the assimilation performance, whereas the ensemble perturbation method has the largest effect. Assimilation leads to significantly positive effect on the simulated AOD field, improving agreement with all of the 12 AERONET sites over the Eastern Asia based on both the correlation coefficient and the root mean square difference (assimilation efficiency). Meanwhile, better agreement of the Ångström Exponent (AE) field is achieved for 8 of the 12 sites due to the assimilation of AOD only.

An evaluation of simulated particulate sulfate over East Asia through global model intercomparison

Sulfate aerosols simulated by an aerosol module coupled to the Nonhydrostatic Icosahedral Atmospheric Model (NICAM) at a spatial resolution (220 km) widely used by global climate models were evaluated by a comparison with in situ observations and the same aerosol module coupled to the Model for Interdisciplinary Research on Climate (MIROC) over East Asia for January, April, July, and October 2006. The results indicated that a horizontal gradient of sulfate from the source over China to the outflow over Korea-Japan was present in both the simulations and the observations. At the observation sites, the correlation coefficients of the sulfate concentrations between the simulations and the observations were high (NICAM: 0.49–0.89, MIROC: 0.61–0.77), whereas the simulated sulfate concentrations were lower than those obtained by the observation with the normalized mean bias of NICAM being −68 to −54% (all), −77 to −63% (source), and −67 to −30% (outflow) and that of MIROC being −61 to −28% (all), −77 to −63% (source), and −60 to +2% (outflow). Both NICAM and MIROC strongly underpredict surface SO2 over China source regions and Korea-Japan outflow regions, but the MIROC SO2 is much higher than NICAM SO2 over both regions. These differences between the models were mainly explained by differences in the sulfate formation within clouds and the dry deposition of SO2. These results indicated that the uncertainty of the meteorological and cloud fields as well as the vertical transport patterns between the different host climate models has a substantial impact on the simulated sulfate distribution.

Analysis and Evaluation of the Global Aerosol Optical Properties Simulated by an Online Aerosol-coupled Non-hydrostatic Icosahedral Atmospheric Model

Aerosol optical properties are simulated using the Spectral Radiation Transport Model for Aerosol Species (SPRINTARS) coupled with the Non-hydrostatic ICosahedral Atmospheric Model (NICAM). The 3-year global mean all-sky aerosol optical thickness (AOT) at 550 nm, the Ångström Exponent (AE) based on AOTs at 440 and 870 nm, and the single scattering albedo (SSA) at 550 nm are estimated at 0.123, 0.657 and 0.944, respectively. For each aerosol species, the mean AOT is within the range of the AeroCom models. Both the modeled all-sky and clear-sky results are compared with observations from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET). The simulated spatiotemporal distributions of all-sky AOTs can generally reproduce the MODIS retrievals, and the correlation and model skill can be slightly improved using the clear-sky results over most land regions. The differences between clear-sky and all-sky AOTs are larger over polluted regions. Compared with observations from AERONET, the modeled and observed all-sky AOTs and AEs are generally in reasonable agreement, whereas the SSA variation is not well captured. Although the spatiotemporal distributions of all-sky and clear-sky results are similar, the clear-sky results are generally better correlated with the observations. The clear-sky AOT and SSA are generally lower than the all-sky results, especially in those regions where the aerosol chemical composition is contributed to mostly by sulfate aerosol. The modeled clear-sky AE is larger than the all-sky AE over those regions dominated by hydrophilic aerosol, while the opposite is found over regions dominated by hydrophobic aerosol.

Applying a local Ensemble transform Kalman filter assimilation system to the NICAM-SPRINTARS model

A Local Ensemble Transform Kalman Filter (LETKF) assimilation system has been implemented to a new type of ultra-high resolution aerosol-coupled global cloud resolving model called the Nonhydrostatic Icosahedral Atmospheric Model or NICAM to perform an experimental aerosol reanalysis. The Level 3 filtered, corrected, and aggregated MODIS AOD based on MODIS Level 2 aerosol product using the standard Collection 5 MODIS AOD algorithm are used to test the assimilation system. A posteriori AOT reduced the RMSD between MODIS AOT by 29.7% compared to a priori AOT.