TY - JOUR
T1 - Evaluation of the aerosol vertical distribution in global aerosol models through comparison against CALIOP measurements
T2 - AeroCom phase II results
AU - Koffi, Brigitte
AU - Schulz, Michael
AU - Bréon, François Marie
AU - Dentener, Frank
AU - Steensen, Birthe Marie
AU - Griesfeller, Jan
AU - Winker, David
AU - Balkanski, Yves
AU - Bauer, Susanne E.
AU - Bellouin, Nicolas
AU - Berntsen, Terje
AU - Bian, Huisheng
AU - Chin, Mian
AU - Diehl, Thomas
AU - Easter, Richard
AU - Ghan, Steven
AU - Hauglustaine, Didier A.
AU - Iversen, Trond
AU - Kirkevåg, Alf
AU - Liu, Xiaohong
AU - Lohmann, Ulrike
AU - Myhre, Gunnar
AU - Rasch, Phil
AU - Seland, Øyvind
AU - Skeie, Ragnhild B.
AU - Steenrod, Stephen D.
AU - Stier, Philip
AU - Tackett, Jason
AU - Takemura, Toshihiko
AU - Tsigaridis, Kostas
AU - Vuolo, Maria Raffaella
AU - Yoon, Jinho
AU - Zhang, Kai
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the European Commission under the project IS-ENES (Infrastructure for the European Network for Earth System Modelling) and the Administrative Arrangement AMITO (070307/ENV/2012/636596/C3). We thank NASA teams and the ICARE Data and Services Center for providing access to the CALIOP CNES/NASA data used in this study and for providing continuous computing access and support. We are also very grateful to three reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions that allowed improving the quality of the manuscript and reinforcing some of our findings. T. Iversen, A. Kirkevåg, and Ø. Seland (and B. Koffi) were (also) supported by the Research Council of Norway through the EarthClim (207711/ E10), EVA (229771), and NOTUR/NorStore projects, CRAICC, and through the EU projects PEGASOS and ACCESS. M. Schulz and A. Kirkevåg also received funding from the Norwegian Space Center through the PM-VRAE and PM-MACS projects. S. Ghan, R. Easter, P. Rasch, J. Yoon and K. Zhang were funded by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) program. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is operated for DOE by Battelle Memorial Institute under contract DE-AC06-76RLO 1830. S.E. Bauer and K. Tsigaridis acknowledge resources supporting this work by the NASA High-End Computing (HEC) Program through the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) at Goddard Space Flight Center and support by the NASA MAP program Modeling, Analysis, and Prediction Climate Variability and Change (NNH08ZDA001N-MAP). M. Schulz, Jan Griesfeller, R.B. Skeie, T. Berntsen and G. Myhre were supported by the Research Council of Norway, through the grants SLAC, AEROCOM-P3 and ClimSense. K. Zhang acknowledges the German Climate Computing Center (Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum GmbH, DKRZ) for making the computational resources available for ECHAM5.5-HAM2 simulations. The CALIOP and AeroCom data and tools used to produce the aerosol extinction profiles analyzed in this paper are available on the AeroCom Database and User Server (aerocom-users.met.no). They are accessible upon request, following the AeroCom Policy and access conditions described under http://aero-com.met.no/data.html.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.
PY - 2016
Y1 - 2016
N2 - The ability of 11 models in simulating the aerosol vertical distribution from regional to global scales, as part of the second phase of the AeroCom model intercomparison initiative (AeroCom II), is assessed and compared to results of the first phase. The evaluation is performed using a global monthly gridded data set of aerosol extinction profiles built for this purpose from the CALIOP (Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization) Layer Product 3.01. Results over 12 subcontinental regions show that five models improved, whereas three degraded in reproducing the interregional variability in Zα0-6 km, the mean extinction height diagnostic, as computed from the CALIOP aerosol profiles over the 0-6 km altitude range for each studied region and season. While the models’ performance remains highly variable, the simulation of the timing of the Zα0-6 km peak season has also improved for all but two models from AeroCom Phase I to Phase II. The biases in Zα0-6 kmare smaller in all regions except Central Atlantic, East Asia, and North and South Africa. Most of the models now underestimate Zα0-6 km over land, notably in the dust and biomass burning regions in Asia and Africa. At global scale, the AeroCom II models better reproduce the Zα0-6 km latitudinal variability over ocean than over land. Hypotheses for the performance and evolution of the individual models and for the intermodel diversity are discussed. We also provide an analysis of the CALIOP limitations and uncertainties contributing to the differences between the simulations and observations.
AB - The ability of 11 models in simulating the aerosol vertical distribution from regional to global scales, as part of the second phase of the AeroCom model intercomparison initiative (AeroCom II), is assessed and compared to results of the first phase. The evaluation is performed using a global monthly gridded data set of aerosol extinction profiles built for this purpose from the CALIOP (Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization) Layer Product 3.01. Results over 12 subcontinental regions show that five models improved, whereas three degraded in reproducing the interregional variability in Zα0-6 km, the mean extinction height diagnostic, as computed from the CALIOP aerosol profiles over the 0-6 km altitude range for each studied region and season. While the models’ performance remains highly variable, the simulation of the timing of the Zα0-6 km peak season has also improved for all but two models from AeroCom Phase I to Phase II. The biases in Zα0-6 kmare smaller in all regions except Central Atlantic, East Asia, and North and South Africa. Most of the models now underestimate Zα0-6 km over land, notably in the dust and biomass burning regions in Asia and Africa. At global scale, the AeroCom II models better reproduce the Zα0-6 km latitudinal variability over ocean than over land. Hypotheses for the performance and evolution of the individual models and for the intermodel diversity are discussed. We also provide an analysis of the CALIOP limitations and uncertainties contributing to the differences between the simulations and observations.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84978086987&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84978086987&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1002/2015JD024639
DO - 10.1002/2015JD024639
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84978086987
SN - 0148-0227
VL - 121
SP - 7254
EP - 7283
JO - Journal of Geophysical Research
JF - Journal of Geophysical Research
IS - 12
ER -