Abstract
Abstract. During the months of June and July 2013, over the Euro–Mediterranean area, the ADRIMED (Aerosol Direct Radiative Impact on the regional climate in the MEDiterranean region) project was dedicated to characterize the ozone and aerosol concentrations in the troposphere. It is first shown that this period was not highly polluted compared to previous summers in this region, with a moderate ozone production, no significant vegetation fire events and several precipitation periods scavenging the aerosol. The period is modeled with the WRF (Weather Research and Forecasting) and CHIMERE models, and their ability to quantify the observed pollution transport events is presented. The CHIMERE model simulating all kinds of sources (anthropogenic, biogenic, mineral dust, vegetation fires); the aerosol speciation, not available with the measurements, is presented: during the whole period, the aerosol was mainly constituted by mineral dust, sea salt and sulfates close to the surface and mainly by mineral dust in the troposphere. Compared to the AERONET (Aerosol Robotic Network) size distribution, it is shown that the model underestimates the coarse mode near mineral dust sources and overestimates the fine mode in the Mediterranean area, highlighting the need to improve the model representation of the aerosol size distribution both during emissions, long-range transport and deposition.
Highlights
The Euro–Mediterranean region is surrounded by many urbanized and agricultural lands in the north and arid regions in the south
This may be due to compensation errors acting differently as a function of the source types and locations: the aerosol size distribution is different between mineral dust and anthropogenic emissions; i.e., the combination of errors
A systematic difference is observed between the model and the measurements: the main peak of the modeled coarse mode is for a radius of ≈ 1 μm, when the AERONET aerosol size distribution (ASD) exhibits a peak for a radius of ≈ 2 μm
Summary
The Euro–Mediterranean region is surrounded by many urbanized and agricultural lands in the north and arid regions in the south. ADRIMED is part of the international program ChArMEx (Chemistry–Aerosol Mediterranean Experiment; Dulac et al, 2013), aiming at assessing the present and future state of atmospheric chemistry in the Mediterranean area and its impact on regional climate, air quality, and marine ecosystems This project completements several previous studies dedicated to the analysis of ozone and aerosols over the Mediterranean area. The integrated project EUCAARI (dedicated to the Aerosol Climate Air Quality Interactions; Kulmala et al, 2011) was conducted to better characterize the aerosol life cycle and composition in Europe, integrating many types of aerosol studies, from the nano to the global scales, with a large scientific community These measurements have been accompanied by significant development in regional and global chemistry transport models (CTMs).
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