A comparison of scavenging and deposition processes in global models: results from the WCRP Cambridge Workshop of 1995

P. Rasch (1) , J. Feichter (2) , Kathy S. Law (3) , N. M. Mahowald (4) , J. Penner (5) , C. Benkovitz (6) , C. Genthon (7) , C. Giannakopoulos (3) , P. Kasibhatla (8) , D. Koch (9) , H. Levy (10) , T. Maki (11) , M. Prather (12) , D. Roberts , G.-J. Roelofs (13) , D. Stevenson , Z. Stockwell (8) , S. Taguchi , M. Kritz , M. Chipperfield (14) , D. Baldocchi (15) , P. Mcmurry , L. Barrie , Yves Balkanski (16, 17) , R. Chatfield (18) , E. Kjellström (19) , M. Lawrence (20) , H. N. Lee , J. Lelieveld (20) , K. Noone (21) , J. Seinfeld (20) , G. Stenchikov (22) , S. Schwartz (6) , C. Walcek (23) , D. Williamson (1)

1 NCAR - National Center for Atmospheric Research [Boulder]
2 MPI-M - Max-Planck-Institut für Meteorologie
3 Department of Chemistry [Cambridge, UK]
4 Bren School of Environmental Science & Management
5 AOSS - Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Space Sciences [Ann Arbor]
6 BNL - Brookhaven National Laboratory [Upton, NY]
7 LGGE - Laboratoire de glaciologie et géophysique de l'environnement
8 Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences
9 GISS - NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
10 GFDL - NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory
11 JMA - Japan Meteorological Agency
12 ESS - Department of Earth System Science [Irvine]
13 IMAU - Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research [Utrecht]
14 NCAS - National Centre for Atmospheric Science [Leeds]
15 Biometeorology lab [Berkeley]
16 LSCE - Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement [Gif-sur-Yvette]
17 MERMAID - Modelling the Earth Response to Multiple Anthropogenic Interactions and Dynamics
18 ARC - NASA Ames Research Center
19 SMHI - Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute
20 MPIC - Max-Planck-Institut für Chemie
21 MISU - Department of Meteorology [Stockholm]
22 University of Maryland [College Park]
23 ASRC - Atmospheric Sciences Research Center

We report on results from a World Climate Research Program workshop on representations of scavenging and deposition processes in global transport models of the atmosphere. 15 models were evaluated by comparing simulations of radon, lead, sulfur dioxide, and sulfate against each other, and against observations of these constituents. This paper provides a survey on the simulation differences between models. It identifies circumstances where models are consistent with observations or with each other, and where they differ from observations or with each other. The comparison shows that most models are able to simulate seasonal species concentrations near the surface over continental sites to within a factor of 2 over many regions of the globe. Models tend to agree more closely over source (continental) regions than for remote (polar and oceanic) regions. Model simulations differ most strongly in the upper troposphere for species undergoing wet scavenging processes. There are not a sufficient number of observations to characterize the climatology (long-term average) of species undergoing wet scavenging in the upper troposphere.This highlights the need for either a different strategy for model evaluation (e.g., comparisons onan event by event basis) or many more observations of a few carefully chosen constituents.

Domaines: Physique Atmosphérique et Océanique [physics.ao-ph]; Climatologie

P. Rasch, J. Feichter, Kathy S. Law, N. M. Mahowald, J. Penner, et al.. A comparison of scavenging and deposition processes in global models: results from the WCRP Cambridge Workshop of 1995. Tellus B - Chemical and Physical Meteorology, 2000, 52 (4), pp.1025-1056. ⟨10.3402/tellusb.v52i4.17091⟩. ⟨hal-02870588⟩