Aerosol-Radiation Interaction In the Marine Atmospheric Boundary Layer

Observational and numerical studies indicate that aerosols interacting with both short- and long-wave radiation in the atmospheric boundary layer impact its structure and evolution. We will present our implementation of aerosol-radiation interaction in a single column model (SCM) that is a part of the Common Community Physics Package (CCPP), using the Goddard Global Ozone Chemistry Aerosol Radiation and Transport (GOCART) description of aerosols as passive tracers, and its validation against other numerical models, and observation data. We implemented the interaction in the SCM to be contained in the model driver portion, thus independent of any future updates in the CCPP physics source code.

The preliminary results are based on experiments with dust and sea salt. We discuss the sensitivity to the aerosol mass-distribution into GOCART five size bins. We will show the impact of the aerosol-radiation interaction on the evolution of the boundary layer by systematically mapping the parameter space of input variables (e.g., atmospheric stability, moisture and wind profiles, aerosol type and their vertical distribution) to SCM. We measure impact by differences in experiments with aerosols and without (control), using a select few diagnostics, such as planetary boundary layer height, downward shortwave radiation at the surface, surface temperature, boundary layer heating rate.