Development of a Polar Stratospheric Cloud Model within the Community Earth System Model using constraints on Type I PSCs from the 2010–2011 Arctic winter

Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems

Yunqian Zhu¹  Owen B. Toon¹  Alyn Lambert³  Douglas E. Kinnison²  Matthias Brakebusch¹  Charles G. Bardeen²  Michael J. Mills² 

[1] Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA;National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, USA;Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA

关键词: polar stratospheric clouds;    nonequilibrium growth;    homogeneous nucleation;    denitrification;   

DOI  :  10.1002/2015MS000427

来源: Wiley

【 摘 要 】

Abstract

Polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) are critical elements of Arctic and Antarctic ozone depletion. We establish a PSC microphysics model using coupled chemistry, climate, and microphysics models driven by specific dynamics. We explore the microphysical formation and evolution of STS (Supercooled Ternary Solution) and NAT (Nitric Acid Trihydrate). Characteristics of STS particles dominated by thermodynamics compare well with observations. For example, the mass of STS is close to the thermodynamic equilibrium assumption when the particle surface area is >4 µm²/cm³. We derive a new nucleation rate equation for NAT based on observed denitrification in the 2010–2011 Arctic winter. The homogeneous nucleation scheme leads to supermicron NAT particles as observed. We also find that as the number density of NAT particles increases, the denitrification also increases. Simulations of the PSC lidar backscatter, denitrification, and gas phase species are generally within error bars of the observations. However, the simulations are very sensitive to temperature, which limits our ability to fully constrain some parameters (e.g., denitrification, ozone amount) based on observations.

【 授权许可】

CC BY-NC-ND   
© 2015. The Authors.

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.