Simulating atmospheric particle composition across the Continental United States using the high-detail particle-resolved aerosol model WRF-PartMC

Matthew West, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Usage Details

Regional air quality models represent aerosol particles in a highly simplified manner in terms of particle size and composition. The model simplifications cause errors in model predictions, but these errors are currently not well-quantified and the overall validity of these simplifications remains unclear. In contrast, the particle-resolved regional model WRF-PartMC tracks individual particles within the atmosphere and without simplifying assumptions regarding the evolution of particle size and composition. While WRF-PartMC is computationally expensive, the use of efficient stochastic algorithms, highly scalable parallelization and the unique capabilities of Blue Waters enable ultra-high-resolution modeling of aerosol populations. For this allocation, we will target for the first time a modeling domain that covers the entire Continental United States (CONUS). The simulations will be used to evaluate where and when a simplified aerosol representation results in largest errors in predicted climate-relevant aerosol properties.