ALBERT

Description: The Environment – High Resolution Limited Area Model (Enviro-HIRLAM) is developed as a fully online integrated numerical weather prediction (NWP) and atmospheric chemical transport (ACT) model for research and forecasting of joint meteorological, chemical and biological weather. The integrated modelling system is developed by the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) in collaboration with several European universities. It is the baseline system in the HIRLAM Chemical Branch and used in several countries and different applications. The development was initiated at DMI more than 15 years ago. The model is based on the HIRLAM NWP model with online integrated pollutant transport and dispersion, chemistry, aerosol dynamics, deposition and atmospheric composition feedbacks. To make the model suitable for chemical weather forecasting in urban areas, the meteorological part was improved by implementation of urban parameterisations. The dynamical core was improved by implementing a locally mass-conserving semi-Lagrangian numerical advection scheme, which improves forecast accuracy and model performance. The current version (7.2), in comparison with previous versions, has a more advanced and cost-efficient chemistry, aerosol multi-compound approach, aerosol feedbacks (direct and semi-direct) on radiation and (first and second indirect effects) on cloud microphysics. Since 2004, the Enviro-HIRLAM has been used for different studies, including operational pollen forecasting for Denmark since 2009 and operational forecasting atmospheric composition with downscaling for China since 2017. Following the main research and development strategy, further model developments will be extended towards the new NWP platform – HARMONIE. Different aspects of online coupling methodology, research strategy and possible applications of the modelling system, and fit-for-purpose model configurations for the meteorological and air quality communities are discussed.

Description: The ICTP regional climate model (RegCM3) coupled with a desert dust model is used to simulate the radiative forcing and related climate effects of dust aerosols over East Asia. Two sets of experiments encompassing the main dust producing months, February to May, for 10 years (1997–2006) are conducted and inter-compared, one without (Exp. 1) and one with (Exp. 2) the radiative effects of dust aerosols. The simulation results are evaluated against ground station and satellite data. The model captures the basic observed climatology over the area of interest. The spatial and temporal variations of near surface concentration, mass load, and emission of dust aerosols from the main source regions are reproduced by model, with the main model deficiency being an overestimate of dust amount over the source regions and underestimate downwind of these source areas. Both the top-of-the-atmosphere (TOA) and surface radiative fluxes are decreased by dust and this causes a surface cooling locally up to −1°C. The inclusion of dust radiative forcing leads to a reduction of dust emission in the East Asia source regions, which is mainly caused by an increase in local stability and a corresponding decrease in dust lifting. Our results indicate that dust effects should be included in the assessment of climate change over East Asia.

Description: The impact of climate change on surface ozone over Europe was studied using four offline regional chemistry transport models (CTMs) and one online regional integrated climate-chemistry model (CCM), driven by the same global projection of future climate under the SRES A1B scenario. Anthropogenic emissions of ozone precursors from RCP4.5 for year 2000 were used for simulations of both present and future periods in order to isolate the impact of climate change and to assess the robustness of the results across the different models. The sensitivity of the simulated surface ozone to changes in climate between the periods 2000–2009 and 2040–2049 differs by a factor of two between the models, but the general pattern of change with an increase in southern Europe is similar across different models. Emissions of isoprene differ substantially between different CTMs ranging from 1.6 to 8.0 Tg yr−1 for the current climate, partly due to differences in horizontal resolution of meteorological input data. Also the simulated change in total isoprene emissions varies substantially across models explaining part of the different climate response on surface ozone. Ensemble mean changes in summer mean ozone and mean of daily maximum ozone are close to 1 ppb(v) in parts of the land area in southern Europe. Corresponding changes of 95-percentiles of hourly ozone are close to 2 ppb(v) in the same region. In northern Europe ensemble mean for mean and daily maximum show negative changes while there are no negative changes for the higher percentiles indicating that climate impacts on O3 could be especially important in connection with extreme summer events.

Description: The regional climate model RegCM3 coupled with a radiatively active aerosol model with online feedback is used to investigate direct and semi-direct radiative aerosol effects over the Sahara and Europe in a test case of July 2003. The aerosol model includes dust particles in addition to sulfates, hydrophobic and hydrophilic black carbon and organic carbon. The role of the aerosol online feedback on the radiation budget and the direct radiative forcing (short-wave and long-wave) by dust particles are investigated by intercomparing results from three experiments: REF, including all interactive aerosol components, Exp1, not accounting for the aerosol radiative feedback, and Exp2 not accounting for desert dust particles. The comparison of results in the REF experiment with satellite observations, sun/sky radiometer measurements, and lidar profiles at selected Central Mediterranean sites reveals that the spatio-temporal evolution of the aerosol optical depth is reasonably well reproduced by the model during the entire month of July. Results for the dust outbreaks of 17 and 24 July, averaged over the simulation domain, show that the daily-mean SW direct radiative forcing by all particles is −24 Wm−2 and −3.4 Wm−2 on 17 July and −25 Wm−2 and −3.5 Wm−2 on 24 July at the surface and top of the atmosphere, respectively. This is partially offset by the LW direct radiative forcing, which is 7.6 Wm−2 and 1.9 Wm−2 on 17 July and 8.4 Wm−2 and 1.9 Wm−2 on 24 July at the surface and top of the atmosphere, respectively. Hence, the daily-mean SW forcing is offset by the LW forcing of ~30% at the surface and of ~50% at the ToA. It is also shown that atmospheric dynamics and hence dust production and advection processes are dependent on the simulation assumptions and may significantly change within few tens of kilometers. The comparison of REF and Exp1 shows that the aerosol online feedback on the radiation budget decreases the domain-average daily-mean value of the 2 m-temperature, aerosol column burden (CB), and short-wave (SW) atmospheric forcing by −0.52 °C, 14%, and 0.9%, respectively on 17 July and by −0.39 °C, 12% and 12%, respectively on 24 July. The comparison of REF and Exp2 reveals that on 17 July, radiatively-active dust particles decrease the daily-mean 2 m-temperature averaged over the whole simulation domain by 0.4% even if are responsible for 99.8% and 97% of the daily-mean aerosol column burden and SW atmospheric forcing, respectively.

Description: The Environment – HIgh Resolution Limited Area Model (Enviro-HIRLAM) is developed as a fully online integrated numerical weather prediction (NWP) and atmospheric chemical transport (ACT) model for research and forecasting of joint meteorological, chemical and biological weather. The integrated modelling system is developed by DMI in collaboration with several European universities. It is the baseline system in the HIRLAM Chemical Branch and used in several countries and different applications. The development was initiated at DMI more than 15 years ago. The first version was based on the DMI-HIRLAM NWP model with online integrated passive pollutant transport and dispersion, chemistry, aerosol dynamics, deposition and indirect effects. To make the model suitable for chemical weather forecasting (CWF) in urban areas the meteorological part was improved by implementation of urban parameterizations. The dynamical core was improved by implementing a locally mass conserving semi-Lagrangian numerical advection scheme, which improves forecast accuracy and model performance. The latest developing version is based on HIRLAM reference v7.2 with a more advanced and effective chemistry, aerosol multi-compound approach, aerosol feedbacks (direct and semi-direct) on radiation and (first and second indirect effects) on cloud microphysics. Since 2004 the Enviro-HIRLAM is used for different studies, including operational pollen forecasting for Denmark since 2009. Following main research and development strategy the further model developments will be extended towards the new NWP platform – HARMONIE. Different aspects of online coupling methodology, research strategy and possible applications of the modelling system, and fit-for-purpose model configurations for the meteorological and air quality communities are discussed.

Description: The impact of climate change on surface ozone over Europe was studied using four offline regional chemistry transport models (CTMs) and one online regional integrated climate-chemistry model (CCM) driven by the same global projection of future climate under the SRES A1B scenario. Anthropogenic emissions of ozone precursors from RCP4.5 for year 2000 were used for simulations of both present and future periods in order to isolate the impact of climate change and to assess the robustness of the result across the different models. The sensitivity of the simulated surface ozone to changes in climate between the periods 2000–2009 and 2040–2049 differs among the models, but the general pattern of change with an increase in southern Europe and decrease in northern Europe is similar across different models. Emissions of isoprene differ substantially between different CTMs ranging from 1.6 to 8.0 Tg yr−1 for the current climate, partly due to differences in horizontal resolution of meteorological input data. Also the simulated change in isoprene emissions varies substantially across models explaining part of the different response. Average model changes in summer mean ozone and mean of daily maximum ozone exceed 1 ppb(v) in parts of the land area in southern Europe. Corresponding changes of 95-percentiles of hourly ozone exceed 2 ppb(v) in the same region. Over land areas in northern Europe ensemble mean changes in all these measures are mostly negative.

Description: The regional climate model RegCM3 coupled with a radiatively active aerosol model with online feedback is used to investigate direct and semi-direct radiative aerosol effects over the Sahara and Europe in a test case of July 2003. The aerosol model includes dust particles in addition to sulfates, hydrophobic and hydrophilic black carbon and organic carbon. The role of the aerosol online feedback on the radiation budget and the direct radiative forcing (short-wave and long-wave) by dust particles are investigated by intercomparing results from three experiments: REF, including all interactive aerosol components, Exp1, not accounting for the aerosol radiative feedback, and Exp2 not accounting for desert dust particles. The comparison of results in the REF experiment with satellite observations, sun/sky radiometer measurements, and lidar profiles at selected Central Mediterranean sites reveals that the spatio-temporal evolution of the aerosol optical depth is reasonably well reproduced by the model during the entire month of July. Results for the dust outbreaks of 17 and 24 July, averaged over the simulation domain, show that the daily-mean SW direct radiative forcing by all particles is −24 W/m2 and −3.4 W/m2 on 17 July and −25 W/m2 and −3.5 W/m2 on 24 July at the surface and top of the atmosphere, respectively. This is partially offset by a LW direct radiative forcing of ~30% at the surface and of ~50% at the ToA. It is also shown that atmospheric dynamics and hence dust production and advection processes are dependent on the simulation assumptions and may significantly change within few tens of kilometers. The comparison of REF and Exp1 shows that the aerosol online feedback on the radiation budget decreases the domain-average daily-mean value of the 2 m-temperature, aerosol column burden (CB), and short-wave (SW) atmospheric forcing by 0.52°C, 14%, and 0.9%, respectively on 17 July and by 0.39°C, 12% and 12%, respectively on 24 July. The comparison of REF and Exp2 reveals that on 17 July, radiatively-active dust particles decrease the daily-mean 2-m temperature averaged over the whole simulation domain by 0.12°C even if are responsible for 99.8% and 97% of the daily-mean aerosol column burden and SW atmospheric forcing, respectively.

Description: We develop a desert dust module and implement it within a regional climate model (RegCM). The dust module includes emission, transport, gravitational settling, wet and dry removal and calculations of dust optical properties. The coupled RegCM-dust model is applied to the simulation of two dust episodes over the Sahara region (a northeastern Africa dust outbreak, and a west Africa-Atlantic dust outbreak observed during the SHADE "Saharan Dust Experiment") as well as a three month simulation over an extended domain covering the Africa-Europe sector. Comparison with satellite and insitu (for SHADE) measurements shows that the model captures the main spatial (both horizontal and vertical) and temporal features of the dust distribution. The main model deficiency occurred in the SHADE case, when the model failed to accurately simulate the development of a mesoscale low associated with an easterly wave that contributed to the generation of the dust outbreak. The model appears suitable to conduct long term simulations of the effects of Saharan dust on African and European climate.

Description: The RegCM-CHEM4 is a new online climate-chemistry model based on the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) regional climate model (RegCM4). Tropospheric gas-phase chemistry is integrated into the climate model using the condensed version of the Carbon Bond Mechanism (CBM-Z; Zaveri and Peters, 1999) with a fast solver based on radical balances. We evaluate the model over Continental Europe for two different time scales: (1) an event-based analysis of the ozone episode associated with the heat wave of August 2003 and (2) a climatological analysis of a six-year simulation (2000–2005). For the episode analysis, model simulations show good agreement with European Monitoring and Evaluation Program (EMEP) observations of hourly ozone over different regions in Europe and capture ozone concentrations during and after the August 2003 heat wave event. For long-term climate simulations, the model captures the seasonal cycle of ozone concentrations with some over prediction of ozone concentrations in non-heat wave summers. Overall, the ozone and ozone precursor evaluation shows the feasibility of using RegCM-CHEM4 for decadal-length simulations of chemistry-climate interactions.

Description: The RegCM-CHEM4 is a new online climate-chemistry model based on the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) regional climate model (RegCM4). Tropospheric gas-phase chemistry is integrated into the climate model using the condensed version of the Carbon Bond Mechanism (CBM-Z; Zaveri and Peters, 1999) with a fast solver based on radical balances. We evaluate the model over continental Europe for two different time scales: (1) an event-based analysis of the ozone episode associated with the heat wave of August 2003 and (2) a climatological analysis of a six-year simulation (2000–2005). For the episode analysis, model simulations show good agreement with European Monitoring and Evaluation Programme (EMEP) observations of hourly ozone over different regions in Europe and capture ozone concentrations during and after the summer 2003 heat wave event. For long-term climate simulations, the model captures the seasonal cycle of ozone concentrations with some over prediction of ozone concentrations in non-heat wave summers. Overall, the ozone and ozone precursor evaluation shows the feasibility of using RegCM-CHEM4 for decadal-length simulations of chemistry-climate interactions.