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Preprints
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-1055
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-1055
04 Jul 2023
 | 04 Jul 2023

Impacts of spatial heterogeneity of anthropogenic aerosol emissions in a regionally-refined global aerosol-climate model

Taufiq Hassan, Kai Zhang, Jianfeng Li, Balwinder Singh, Shixuan Zhang, Hailong Wang, and Po-Lun Ma

Abstract. Emissions of anthropogenic aerosol and their precursors are often prescribed in global aerosol models. Most of these emissions are spatially heterogeneous at model grid scales. When remapped from low-resolution data, the spatial heterogeneity in emissions can be lost, leading to large errors in the simulation. It can also cause the conservation problem if non-conservative remapping is used. The default anthropogenic emission treatment in Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) is subject to both problems. In this study, we introduce a revised emission treatment for the E3SM atmosphere model (EAM) that ensures conservation of mass fluxes and preserves the original emission heterogeneity at the model-resolved grid scale. We assess the error estimates associated with the default emission treatment and the impact of improved heterogeneity and mass conservation in both globally uniform standard-resolution (~165 km) and regionally-refined high-resolution (~42 km) simulations. The default treatment incurs significant errors near surface, particularly over sharp emission gradient zones. Much larger errors are observed in high-resolution simulations. It substantially underestimates the aerosol burden, surface concentration, and aerosol sources over highly polluted regions, while overestimates these quantities over less-polluted adjacent areas. Large errors can persist at higher elevation for daily mean estimates, which can affect aerosol extinction profiles and aerosol optical depth (AOD). We find that the revised treatment significantly improves the accuracy of the aerosol emissions from surface and elevated sources near sharp spatial gradient regions, with significant improvement in the spatial heterogeneity and variability of simulated surface concentration in high-resolution simulations. In the next-generation E3SM running at convection-permitting scales where the resolved spatial heterogeneity is significantly increased, the revised emission treatment is expected to be better represent the aerosol emissions as well as their lifecycle and impacts on climate.

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Journal article(s) based on this preprint

02 May 2024
Impacts of spatial heterogeneity of anthropogenic aerosol emissions in a regionally refined global aerosol–climate model
Taufiq Hassan, Kai Zhang, Jianfeng Li, Balwinder Singh, Shixuan Zhang, Hailong Wang, and Po-Lun Ma
Geosci. Model Dev., 17, 3507–3532, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-3507-2024,https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-3507-2024, 2024
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The requested preprint has a corresponding peer-reviewed final revised paper. You are encouraged to refer to the final revised version.

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Anthropogenic aerosol emissions are essential part of the global aerosol models. Significant...
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