WRF-Chem simulations of aerosols and anthropogenic aerosol radiative forcing in East Asia

Abstract

This study aims to provide a first comprehensive evaluation of WRF-Chem for modeling aerosols and anthropogenic aerosol radiative forcing (RF, including direct, semi-direct and indirect forcing) over East Asia. Several numerical experiments were conducted from November 2007 to December 2008. Comparison between model results and observations shows that the model can generally reproduce the observed spatial distributions of aerosol concentration, aerosol optical depth (AOD) and single scattering albedo (SSA) from measurements at many sites, including the relatively higher aerosol concentration and AOD over East China and the relatively lower AOD over Southeast Asia, Korea, and Japan. The model also depicts the seasonal variation and transport of pollutions over East Asia. Particulate matter of 10 μm or less in the aerodynamic diameter (PM10), black carbon (BC), sulfate (SO42−), nitrate (NO3−) and ammonium (NH4+) concentrations are higher in spring than other seasons in Japan, which indicates the possible influence of pollutant transport from polluted area of East Asia. The model underestimates SO42− and organic carbon (OC) concentrations over mainland China by about a factor of 2, while overestimates NO3− concentration in autumn along the Yangtze River. The model captures the dust events at the Zhangye site in the semi-arid region of China. AOD is high over Southwest and Central China in winter and spring and over North China in winter, spring and summer while is low over South China in summer due to monsoon precipitation. SSA is lowest in winter and highest in summer. Anthropogenic aerosol RF is estimated to range from −5 to −20 W m−2 over land and −20 to −40 W m−2 over adjacent oceans at the top of atmosphere (TOA), 5–30 W m−2 in the atmosphere (ATM) and −15 to −40 W m−2 at the bottom (BOT). The warming effect of anthropogenic aerosol in ATM results from BC aerosol while the negative aerosol RF at TOA is caused by scattering aerosols such as SO42−, NO3− and NH4+. Positive BC RF at TOA compensates 40–50% of the TOA cooling associated with anthropogenic aerosol.