Abstract

NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS) is on its way to deploy various operational prediction applications using the Unified Forecast System (https://ufscommunity.org/), a community-based coupled, comprehensive Earth modeling system. An aerosol model component developed in a collaboration between the Global Systems Laboratory, Chemical Science Laboratory, the Air Resources Laboratory, and Environmental Modeling Center (GSL, CSL, ARL, EMC) was coupled online with the FV3 Global Forecast System (FV3GFS) using the National Unified Operational Prediction Capability (NUOPC)-based NOAA Environmental Modeling System (NEMS) software framework. This aerosol prediction system replaced the NEMS GFS Aerosol Component (NGAC) system in the National Center for Environment Prediction (NCEP) production suite in September 2020 as one of the ensemble members of the Global Ensemble Forecast System (GEFS), dubbed GEFS-Aerosols v1. The aerosol component of atmospheric composition in GEFS is based on the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF-Chem) that was previously included into FIM-Chem (Zhang et al, 2021). GEFS-Aerosols includes bulk modules from the Goddard Chemistry Aerosol Radiation and Transport model (GOCART). Additionally, the biomass burning plume rise module from High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR)-Smoke was implemented; the GOCART dust scheme was replaced by the FENGSHA dust scheme (developed by ARL); the Blended Global Biomass Burning Emissions Product (GBBEPx V3) provides biomass burning emission and Fire Radiative Power (FRP) data; and the global anthropogenic emission inventories are derived from the Community Emissions Data System (CEDS). All sub-grid scale transport and deposition is handled inside the atmospheric physics routines, which required consistent implementation of positive definite tracer transport and wet scavenging in the physics parameterizations used by NCEP’s operational Global Forecast System based on FV3 (FV3GFS). This paper describes the details of GEFS-Aerosols model development and evaluation of real-time and retrospective runs using different observations from in situ measurement, satellite and aircraft data. GEFS-Aerosols predictions demonstrate substantial improvements for both composition and variability of aerosol distributions over those from the former operational NGAC system.

Highlights

  • The operational air quality predictions in National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s National Weather 3 Service (NWS) contribute to the protection of lives and health in the US

  • A real-time forecast was performed starting on July 1, 2019 and continuing to the present day using the GBBEPx V3 fire 13 emissions with the plume-rise module based on real-time Fire Radiative Power (FRP) data

  • The NGACv2 results are closer to the ICAP, Global Ensemble Forecast System (GEFS)-Aerosols and AERONET before August, and NGACv2 shows a slight increase of total aerosol optical depth (AOD) in early September, but the NGACv2 AOD magnitude is much lower than the AERONET by about a factor of 5-7 from the middle of August onward

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Summary

Introduction

The operational air quality predictions in National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s National Weather 3 Service (NWS) contribute to the protection of lives and health in the US (https://airquality.weather.gov). NGACv2 included additional aerosol species of sea salt, sulfate, organic carbon, and black carbon from the updated GOCART modules, and biomass burning emissions from the NESDIS STAR’s Global Biomass Burning Product (GBBEPx) as well as GSFC’s Quick Fire Emission Data Version 2 from a polar-orbiting sensor (QFED2) Both science and software upgrades in the global forecast system were updated and implemented into NGACv2 in March 2017 to provide 5-day multispecies aerosols forecast products at the T126 L64 resolution, approximately 100 km. The model predicted global aerosol products from GEFS-Aerosols are used for other applications, such as to provide lateral boundary conditions for NOAA’s regional National Air Quality Forecast Capability (NAQFC), satellite sea surface temperature (SST) physical retrievals, and the global solar insolation estimation [Wang et al, 2018]. All sub-grid scale transport and deposition is handled inside the atmospheric physics routines of simplified Arakawa–Schubert (SAS) scheme, which required consistent implementation of positive definite tracer transport and wet scavenging in the physics parameterizations in GFSv15 and subsequent GEFSv12

Aerosol component
GEFS-Aerosols Coupled Architecture
Observation, reanalysis data and other model data
Background
Biomass burning emission
Impacts of Different Fire Emission Inventories and Plume-rise and fire events evaluation
Evaluation of global AOD
Evaluation of AOD associated with fire events
Evaluation of AOD associated with dust events
Evaluation of major regional averages
ATom-1 retrospective forecast evaluation
Global flight track column sum comparisons
Vertical profile statistics comparisons
Height-latitude profile comparisons over the Atlantic during ATom-1
Summary and future plan
Code and data availability

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