Improvement of aerosol activation/ice nucleation in a source-oriented WRF-Chem model to study a winter Storm in California
The source-oriented Weather Research and Forecasting chemistry (SOWC) model is modified to improve mixed-phase cloud parameterization by including aerosol aging processes (external mixture) in cloud activation/nucleation. The improved SOWC model is applied to investigate how aerosol mixing state inf...
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| Published in: | Atmospheric research 2019-11, Vol.235 (na) |
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| Main Authors: | , , , , |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | eng |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Get full text |
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| Summary: | The source-oriented Weather Research and Forecasting chemistry (SOWC) model is modified to improve mixed-phase cloud parameterization by including aerosol aging processes (external mixture) in cloud activation/nucleation. The improved SOWC model is applied to investigate how aerosol mixing state influences cloud and ice formation and atmospheric optical properties during a winter storm. SOWC tracks 6-dimensional chemical variables (X, Z, Y, Size Bins, Source Types, Species) through an explicit simulation of atmospheric chemistry and physics. A new module is implemented into the enhanced SOWC model to simulate microphysics processes with all source-oriented hydrometeors (cloud, ice, rain, snow and graupel) by using the modified Morrison two-moment microphysics scheme. In this study, all aerosol source types can activate to form cloud droplets based on the Köhler theory, but the dust source type is the only source of ice nuclei (IN). Here, the Goddard shortwave and longwave radiation schemes are modified to use a new geometric optics method to estimate cloud optical properties by considering the chemistry components and the physical shape of each hydrometeor. |
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| ISSN: | 0169-8095 1873-2895 |