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interaction of aerosols in the Thompson scheme

J

jpen

New member
Is there any reference or documentation on the level of aerosol interaction implemented in the Thompson aerosols microphysics scheme? What is known is that nwfa and nifa are read from the aerosol climatology file (QNWFA_QNIFA_SIGMA_MONTHLY.dat) which are used in the module_mp_thompson_aerosols that includes subroutine gt_aod to compute AOD.
  1. Do the concentrations (nwfa and nifa) vary in (or interact with) other processes?
  2. the output field 'scalar' includes aerosols (seasalt, sulfate, dust, bc, oc). Where are the emissions/ forcings read?
  3. in the new version, with the thompson_aerosols microphysics scheme, is AOD the only relevant aerosol related variable to be saved?
 
Please see my answers below:
jpen said:
Is there any reference or documentation on the level of aerosol interaction implemented in the Thompson aerosols microphysics scheme? What is known is that nwfa and nifa are read from the aerosol climatology file (QNWFA_QNIFA_SIGMA_MONTHLY.dat) which are used in the module_mp_thompson_aerosols that includes subroutine gt_aod to compute AOD.
Click to expand...

This paper describes in detail the aerosol-aware Thompson microphysics scheme:
Thompson, Gregory, and Trude Eidhammer, 2014: A study of aerosol impacts on clouds and precipitation development in a large winter cyclone. J. Atmos. Sci., 71.10, 3636-3658. doi:10.1175/JAS-D-13-0305.1
jpen said:
  1. Do the concentrations (nwfa and nifa) vary in (or interact with) other processes?
Click to expand...
They are also active in MYNN PBL scheme. Please see the code "bl_mynn_subroutines.F90", in which the subroutine "mynn_tendencies" handles PBL tendencies including the changes of qnwfa,qnifa,qnbca, etc.
jpen said:
  1. the output field 'scalar' includes aerosols (seasalt, sulfate, dust, bc, oc). Where are the emissions/ forcings read?
Click to expand...
I am not sure of this issue.
jpen said:
  1. in the new version, with the thompson_aerosols microphysics scheme, is AOD the only relevant aerosol related variable to be saved?
Click to expand...
Would you please clarify this question? My understanding is that AOD is only used in RRTMG radiation scheme . Let me know if I am wrong.
 
Specifically for your question (2), which files contain these aerosols (seasalt, sulfate, dust, bc, oc)? Thanks.

jpen said:
Is there any reference or documentation on the level of aerosol interaction implemented in the Thompson aerosols microphysics scheme? What is known is that nwfa and nifa are read from the aerosol climatology file (QNWFA_QNIFA_SIGMA_MONTHLY.dat) which are used in the module_mp_thompson_aerosols that includes subroutine gt_aod to compute AOD.
  1. Do the concentrations (nwfa and nifa) vary in (or interact with) other processes?
  2. the output field 'scalar' includes aerosols (seasalt, sulfate, dust, bc, oc). Where are the emissions/ forcings read?
  3. in the new version, with the thompson_aerosols microphysics scheme, is AOD the only relevant aerosol related variable to be saved?
Click to expand...
 
Thanks for the response and reference. I ran with the 'mp_thompson_aerosols' scheme for 72 hours however, values for aerosols (seasalt, sulfate, dust, bc, oc) concentrations are all zeros in all the timesteps and at all the aerosol levels of the outputs. Hence, I want to know about the emissions. The values of AOD seems to be fine. In this scenario, the related variables of interest seems to be only the AOD. Or am I missing anything other than including the 'mp_thompson_aerosols' option?
 
Last edited:
Would you please upload your namelist.atmosphere and a single MPAS output file that contains aerosols (seasalt, sulfate, dust, bc, oc)? Thanks.
 
please find attached the namelist file. How should I attach the netcdf file? Using convert_mpas, I extracted the aerosol variable and the filesize is about 358 MB. I gzipped it and have attached.
 

Attachments

  • namelist.atmosphere_aero.txt
    2.1 KB · Views: 2
  • latlon.nc.gz
    1.2 MB · Views: 1
Last edited:
@jpen
In MPAS-v8.2.0, those aerosol variables (e.g., seasalt, sulfate, dust, bc, oc) are included in Registry. However, they are never updated in physics. This is why their values are 0. I guess these variables are prepared for MPAS-chem. I will talk to our experts and get back to you.
 
@jpen
Based on our expert, these aerosol variables were only needed by the CAM radiation code (which nobody uses anymore and is quite old). They are not used in MPAS-A. Therefore, please don't worry for the zero values.
 
Thanks for the reply. I understand. I ran a limited area simulations with aerosols but the runs are crashing after a few days. However, the runs without aerosols are going through. The namelist, and the logs are attached.
 

Attachments

  • slurm-11254273.out.txt
    3 KB · Views: 1
  • err_log.atmosphere.0000.out.txt
    3.8 MB · Views: 1
  • ss_LAS_10kms_CP_GF_AERO_2017_namelist.atmosphere.txt
    2.1 KB · Views: 1
Hi,
Please clarify that your run with the option below failed :
Code: 
    config_physics_suite = 'convection_permitting'
    config_microp_scheme = 'mp_thompson_aerosols'

But if you run with the option below, MPAS worked fine.
Code: 
    config_physics_suite = 'convection_permitting'

Let me know if I misunderstand something here.
 
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