Articles | Volume 24, issue 5
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-2985-2024
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-2985-2024
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Research article
| 
07 Mar 2024
Research article |
| 07 Mar 2024
| 07 Mar 2024
Improved estimates of smoke exposure during Australia fire seasons: importance of quantifying plume injection heights
John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Loretta J. Mickley
John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Michelle L. Bell
School of Environment, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511, USA
Tianjia Liu
Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA
Jenny A. Fisher
Centre for Atmospheric Chemistry, School of Earth, Atmospheric and Life Sciences, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, 2522, Australia
Maria Val Martin
School of Biosciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S10 2TN, UK
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We use the GEOS-Chem model to better understand the magnitude and trend in free tropospheric NO2 over the contiguous US. Model underestimate of background NO2 is largely corrected by considering aerosol nitrate photolysis. Increase in aircraft emissions affects satellite retrievals by altering the NO2 shape factor, and this effect is expected to increase in future. We show the importance of properly accounting for the free tropospheric background in interpreting NO2 observations from space.
James Weber, James A. King, Katerina Sindelarova, and Maria Val Martin
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The emissions of volatile organic compounds from vegetation (BVOCs) influence atmospheric composition and contribute to certain gases and aerosols (tiny airborne particles) which play a role in climate change. BVOC emissions are likely to change in the future due to changes in climate and land use. Therefore, accurate simulation of BVOC emission is important, and this study describes an update to the simulation of BVOC emissions in the United Kingdom Earth System Model (UKESM).
Amy Christiansen, Loretta J. Mickley, Junhua Liu, Luke D. Oman, and Lu Hu
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 22, 14751–14782, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-14751-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-14751-2022, 2022
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Maria Paula Pérez-Peña, Jenny A. Fisher, Dylan B. Millet, Hisashi Yashiro, Ray L. Langenfelds, Paul B. Krummel, and Scott H. Kable
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Xiaotian Xu, Xu Feng, Haipeng Lin, Peng Zhang, Shaojian Huang, Zhengcheng Song, Yiming Peng, Tzung-May Fu, and Yanxu Zhang
Geosci. Model Dev., 15, 3845–3859, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-3845-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-3845-2022, 2022
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Mercury is one of the most toxic pollutants in the environment, and wet deposition is a major process for atmospheric mercury to enter, causing ecological and human health risks. High-mercury wet deposition in the southeastern US has been a problem for many years. Here we employed a newly developed high-resolution WRF-GC model with the capability to simulate mercury to study this problem. We conclude that deep convection caused enhanced mercury wet deposition in the southeastern US.
Ka Ming Fung, Maria Val Martin, and Amos P. K. Tai
Biogeosciences, 19, 1635–1655, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-19-1635-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-19-1635-2022, 2022
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Fertilizer-induced ammonia detrimentally affects the environment by not only directly damaging ecosystems but also indirectly altering climate and soil fertility. To quantify these secondary impacts, we enabled CESM to simulate ammonia emission, chemical evolution, and deposition as a continuous cycle. If synthetic fertilizer use is to soar by 30 % from today's level, we showed that the counteracting impacts will increase the global ammonia emission by 3.3 Tg N per year.
Andrew Zammit-Mangion, Michael Bertolacci, Jenny Fisher, Ann Stavert, Matthew Rigby, Yi Cao, and Noel Cressie
Geosci. Model Dev., 15, 45–73, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-45-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-45-2022, 2022
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We present a framework for estimating the sources and sinks (flux) of carbon dioxide from satellite data. The framework is statistical and yields measures of uncertainty alongside all estimates of flux and other parameters in the underlying model. It also allows us to generate other insights, such as the size of errors and biases in the data. The primary aim of this research was to develop a fully statistical flux inversion framework for use by atmospheric scientists.
Kai Wang, Yang Zhang, Shaocai Yu, David C. Wong, Jonathan Pleim, Rohit Mathur, James T. Kelly, and Michelle Bell
Geosci. Model Dev., 14, 7189–7221, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-7189-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-7189-2021, 2021
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The two-way coupled WRF-CMAQ model accounting for complex chemistry–meteorology feedbacks has been applied to the long-term predictions of regional meteorology and air quality over the US. The model results show superior performance and importance of chemistry–meteorology feedbacks when compared to the offline coupled WRF and CMAQ simulations, which suggests that feedbacks should be considered along with other factors in developing future model applications to inform policy making.
Lee T. Murray, Eric M. Leibensperger, Clara Orbe, Loretta J. Mickley, and Melissa Sulprizio
Geosci. Model Dev., 14, 5789–5823, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-5789-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-5789-2021, 2021
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Chemical-transport models are tools used to study air pollution and inform public policy. However, they are limited by the availability of archived meteorology. Here, we describe how the GEOS-Chem chemical-transport model may now be driven by meteorology archived from a state-of-the-art general circulation model for past and future climates, allowing it to be used to explore the impact of climate change on air pollution and atmospheric composition.
Beata Bukosa, Jenny Fisher, Nicholas Deutscher, and Dylan Jones
Geosci. Model Dev. Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-2021-173, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-2021-173, 2021
Revised manuscript not accepted
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Human activities led to rising levels of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), carbon monoxide (CO)) in the atmosphere, threatening our future. We use models and measurements to predict and understand the climatological impact of these gases. Here, we describe a new simulation in the GEOS-Chem model that uses a more accurate method to simulate CO2, CH4 and CO, through their chemical dependence. Relative to the original simulations our results agree better with measurements.
Xu Feng, Haipeng Lin, Tzung-May Fu, Melissa P. Sulprizio, Jiawei Zhuang, Daniel J. Jacob, Heng Tian, Yaping Ma, Lijuan Zhang, Xiaolin Wang, Qi Chen, and Zhiwei Han
Geosci. Model Dev., 14, 3741–3768, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-3741-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-3741-2021, 2021
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WRF-GC is an online coupling of the WRF meteorological model and GEOS-Chem chemical transport model for regional atmospheric chemistry and air quality modeling. In WRF-GC v2.0, we implemented the aerosol–radiation interactions and aerosol–cloud interactions, as well as the capability to nest multiple domains for high-resolution simulations based on the modular framework of WRF-GC v1.0. This allows the GEOS-Chem users to investigate the meteorology–atmospheric chemistry interactions.
Yang Li, Loretta J. Mickley, and Jed O. Kaplan
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 21, 57–68, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-57-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-57-2021, 2021
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Climate models predict a shift toward warmer, drier environments in southwestern North America. Under future climate, the two main drivers of dust trends play opposing roles: (1) CO2 fertilization enhances vegetation and, in turn, decreases dust, and (2) increasing land use enhances dust emissions from northern Mexico. In the worst-case scenario, elevated dust concentrations spread widely over the domain by 2100 in spring, suggesting a large climate penalty on air quality and human health.
Erik Lutsch, Kimberly Strong, Dylan B. A. Jones, Thomas Blumenstock, Stephanie Conway, Jenny A. Fisher, James W. Hannigan, Frank Hase, Yasuko Kasai, Emmanuel Mahieu, Maria Makarova, Isamu Morino, Tomoo Nagahama, Justus Notholt, Ivan Ortega, Mathias Palm, Anatoly V. Poberovskii, Ralf Sussmann, and Thorsten Warneke
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 20, 12813–12851, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-12813-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-12813-2020, 2020
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This paper describes the use of a network of 10 Arctic and midlatitude ground-based FTIR measurement sites to detect enhancements of the wildfire tracers carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide, and ethane from 2003 to 2018. A tagged CO GEOS-Chem simulation is used for source attribution and to evaluate the relative contribution of CO sources to the FTIR measurements. The use of FTIR measurements allowed for the emission ratios of hydrogen cyanide and ethane to be quantified.
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Short summary
During severe wildfire seasons, smoke can have a significant impact on air quality in Australia. Our study demonstrates that characterization of the smoke plume injection fractions greatly affects estimates of surface smoke PM2.5. Using the plume behavior predicted by the machine learning method leads to the best model agreement with observed surface PM2.5 in key cities across Australia, with smoke PM2.5 accounting for 5 %–52 % of total PM2.5 on average during fire seasons from 2009 to 2020.
During severe wildfire seasons, smoke can have a significant impact on air quality in Australia....
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