Development of a global aerosol model using a two‐dimensional sectional method: 1. Model design

Abstract

AbstractThis study develops an aerosol module, the Aerosol Two‐dimensional bin module for foRmation and Aging Simulation version 2 (ATRAS2), and implements the module into a global climate model, Community Atmosphere Model. The ATRAS2 module uses a two‐dimensional (2‐D) sectional representation with 12 size bins for particles from 1 nm to 10 μm in dry diameter and 8 black carbon (BC) mixing state bins. The module can explicitly calculate the enhancement of absorption and cloud condensation nuclei activity of BC‐containing particles by aging processes. The ATRAS2 module is an extension of a 2‐D sectional aerosol module ATRAS used in our previous studies within a framework of a regional three‐dimensional model. Compared with ATRAS, the computational cost of the aerosol module is reduced by more than a factor of 10 by simplifying the treatment of aerosol processes and 2‐D sectional representation, while maintaining good accuracy of aerosol parameters in the simulations. Aerosol processes are simplified for condensation of sulfate, ammonium, and nitrate, organic aerosol formation, coagulation, and new particle formation processes, and box model simulations show that these simplifications do not substantially change the predicted aerosol number and mass concentrations and their mixing states. The 2‐D sectional representation is simplified (the number of advected species is reduced) primarily by the treatment of chemical compositions using two interactive bin representations. The simplifications do not change the accuracy of global aerosol simulations. In part 2, comparisons with measurements and the results focused on aerosol processes such as BC aging processes are shown.