Evaluation of the aerosol vertical distribution in global aerosol models through comparison against CALIOP measurements: AeroCom phase II results

Brigitte Koffi (1) , Michael Schulz (2) , Francois-Marie Breon (3, 4) , Frank Dentener (1) , Birthe Marie Steensen (2) , Jan Griesfeller (2) , David Winker (5) , Yves Balkanski (3, 6) , Susanne E. Bauer (7, 8) , Nicolas Bellouin (9) , Terje Berntsen (10, 11) , Huisheng Bian (12, 13) , Mian Chin (13) , Thomas Diehl (1) , Richard Easter (14) , Steven Ghan (14) , Didier A. Hauglustaine (3, 6) , Trond Iversen (10, 2) , Alf Kirkevag , Xiaohong Liu (15, 14) , Ulrike Lohmann (16) , Gunnar Myhre (11) , Phil Rasch (13) , Oyvind Seland (2) , Ragnhild B. Skeie (11) , Stephen D. Steenrod (13) , Philip Stier (17) , Jason Tackett (18) , Toshihiko Takemura (19) , Kostas Tsigaridis (8, 13) , Maria Raffaella Vuolo (3) , Jinho Yoon (20, 14) , Kai Zhang (21, 14)

1 IES - JRC Institute for Environment and Sustainability
2 MET - Norwegian Meteorological Institute [Oslo]
3 LSCE - Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement [Gif-sur-Yvette]
4 SATINV - Modélisation INVerse pour les mesures atmosphériques et SATellitaires
5 LaRC - NASA Langley Research Center [Hampton]
6 MERMAID - Modelling the Earth Response to Multiple Anthropogenic Interactions and Dynamics
7 GISS - NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
8 CCSR - Center for Climate Systems Research [New York]
9 Department of Meteorology [Reading]
10 Department of Geosciences [University of Arizona]
11 CICERO - Center for International Climate and Environmental Research [Oslo]
12 JCET - Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology [Baltimore]
13 GSFC - NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
14 PNNL - Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
15 UW - University of Wyoming
16 Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
17 Department of Physics [Oxford]
18 SSAI - Science Systems and Applications Inc
19 RIAM - Research Institute for Applied Mechanics [Fukuoka]
20 GIST - Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology
21 MPI-M - Max Planck Institute for Meteorology

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 Z(alpha 0-6 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 Z(alpha 0-6 km) peak season has also improved for all but two models from AeroCom Phase I to Phase II. The biases in Z(alpha 0-6 km) are smaller in all regions except Central Atlantic, East Asia, and North and South Africa. Most of the models now underestimate Z(alpha 0-6 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 Z(alpha 0-6 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.

Domaines: Sciences du Vivant [q-bio]

Brigitte Koffi, Michael Schulz, Francois-Marie Breon, Frank Dentener, Birthe Marie Steensen, et al.. Evaluation of the aerosol vertical distribution in global aerosol models through comparison against CALIOP measurements: AeroCom phase II results. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 2016, 121 (12), pp.7254 - 7283. ⟨10.1002/2015JD024639⟩. ⟨hal-01602797⟩