WRF-Chem Modeling of Carbon Monoxide Emissions Budget and Satellite EDR Assimilation Experiment: AEROSE 2013 Case Study

The MetOp-B satellite Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) has collected high resolution IR spectra capable of retrieving carbon monoxide (CO) profile environmental data records (EDRs) since 2012. The routine CO EDR products from the IASI sounder are useful for determining the role carbon in climate change. The goal of this study is to calculate a tropospheric CO budget for the Tropical Atlantic Ocean domain. This region (40 W to 25 E and 10 S to 25 N) is downwind of robust Northern Hemispheric winter season biomass burning that occurred during the 2013 NOAA Aerosols and Ocean Science Expeditions Campaign. Moreover, this region is in the vicinity of the ozone wave one relative maxima in which CO is an ozone precursor. We utilize the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF-Chem) Model and conduct two runs, the first being a “standard” Control simulation that includes Emission Databases for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) anthropogenic emissions, the second being a simulation that assimilates the IASI CO mixing ratio EDRs at selected tropospheric pressure levels. The domain for the simulations is 42 S to 52 N and 77 W to 64 E as one large grid. For the CO budget, the flux going into and out a smaller domain (40 W to 25 E and 10 S to 25 N) is calculated. This study is unique because it is amongst the first to exploit IASI CO profile mixing ratios (EDRs) for assimilation within a high resolution, coupled chemistry model for studying trace gas budgets associated with African biomass burning.