Dust Mineral Specific Heterogeneous Chemistry in NASA GISS Earth System Model "ModelE"

Soil/mineral dust particles are highly abundant by mass in the atmosphere, and they play an important role in weather, climate, and biogeochemical cycles. For instance, dust is an important factor in tropospheric chemistry, since mineral surfaces react with trace gases and adsorb water vapor. The interaction of dust in these processes depends on fundamental dust properties such as the mineralogical composition, morphology of the particle surfaces, and particle size. While most global models only consider one dust type with globally uniform physical and chemical properties, an improved version of the dust module has been developed in National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) Earth system model ``ModelE'', which distinguishes eight individual mineral species (illite, kaolinite, smectite, carbonates, quartz, feldspar, iron oxides, gypsum) as well as accretions between iron oxides and each of the other mineral types. This improvement allows to take into account the dependence of the prevalent chemical reactions and uptake rates of precursor gases on the involved mineral species. Accordingly, a more complex scheme of heterogeneous chemical reactions is being implemented in the model. The objectives of the current project are to evaluate the dust mineral version of the model with heterogeneous chemistry against satellite and ground based measurements of aerosol properties and trace gases. Furthermore, estimates of the effect of dust heterogeneous chemistry on radiative forcing and its uncertainty will be provided. Here, preliminary results from first model simulations are presented.