A 3D Particle-resolved Model to Quantify Spatial and Temporal Variations in Aerosol Mixing State
Poster PDF
Authors
Jeffrey Henry Curtis — University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Nicole Riemer — University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Matthew West — University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Category
General topics – Aerosols
Description
Understanding the aerosol mixing state impact on aerosol physical and optical properties and its temporal and spatial evolution is currently an open research question. Due to computational constraints, representing aerosol composition in numerical models has been a challenge, and as a result, both modal and sectional representations greatly simplify the aerosol mixing state.
To address this, we coupled the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model and the particle-resolving aerosol physics and chemistry model PartMC-MOSAIC. The resulting model not only explicitly resolves and tracks the size and composition of individual particles as they undergo transformations by coagulation and condensation in the atmosphere, but also resolves the spatial distribution of aerosols and trace gases of the atmosphere, based on meteorological fields predicted by the WRF model. Aerosol emissions are spatially distributed and tracked by source categories. Such a model is only now computationally feasible because of recent advances in efficient numerical algorithms for multiscale stochastic processes.
We present the first-ever particle-resolved simulation on a physically realistic domain, Northern California, where the CARES campaign took place in 2010.We simulated the interaction of aerosol chemistry and physics with transport for a two-day scenario during June, 2010 and we quantified how the aerosol mixing state evolves spatially and temporally by using objective metrics of mixing state.
