Abstracted/indexed

This special issue arises from work conducted by the AMAP Expert Group on short-lived climate forcers for an assessment that will be finalized in 2021. It will include only invited papers.

The fourth phase of the Air Quality Model Evaluation International Initiative (AQMEII) focuses on deposition processes. Since 2008, AQMEII has analysed a number of critical aspects of regional-scale air quality models that require international collaboration and evaluation. Each of the previous three phases have resulted in multi-paper “special issues” in the peer-reviewed literature (two in Atmospheric Environment and one in ACP). AQMEII leverages the long-term experience in model development and application of the two largest communities of such models, namely the North American community and the European one. These two communities have been engaged in AQMEII model evaluation activities that tackled issues such as operational and probabilistic evaluations (phase 1), online model coupling between air quality and meteorology (phase 2), intercontinental transport of air pollutants (phase 3, ACP SI “Global and regional assessment of intercontinental transport of air pollution: results from HTAP, AQMEII and MICS”, 41 papers), and now dry and wet deposition processes (phase 4).

The subject tackled in phase 4 is central to air quality modelling at any scale, and it has never been examined in the systematic and the detailed manner currently underway in AQMEII4. Given the complexity of deposition processes and the variety of approaches adopted by different groups, we opted for an analysis that comprises the individual deposition modules and the full regional-scale models that used those modules as part of a more complex computational system. As customary, for AQMEII two regional modelling domains are considered, a European and a North American one, and simulations are underway for 2 representative years for the processes of interest in the two continents. The process-oriented character of the activity is defined already in the selection of the simulation year. For the North American domain, the air quality in 2010 and 2016 will be simulated to allow comparisons across emissions changes, while for Europe 2009 and 2010 are the designated years to allow comparisons across meteorologically different years. The community presently participating is composed of 15 regional modelling teams and six deposition modules. Subgroups of regional-scale models may be using the same modelling system with a variety of parameterization implementations, or use original models developed in-house. A key feature of the AQMEII multi-model exercise is the submission of all model output on a common grid and at specified observation stations, to a common database at JRC in Ispra, Italy, where a common set of analysis tools which participants can use is available. The variety of the tools used makes possible the comparison of all models with measurements and of specific models with largely used community systems. It also makes it possible to work within the sub-community to exercise different features or modelling options of the community models. Whilst for regional-scale models the evaluation will be based on data on a wide range of pollutants in gas and particle form gathered from standard monitoring networks and soundings in the two continents, in the case of point models, ozone will be the focus, and data have been gathered from sites where high-quality instrumentation has been deployed. Analysis of the ozone dry deposition modules driven by observed site-specific meteorological and biophysical data (i.e., the point models) will focus on process-oriented model evaluation and intercomparison.

As mentioned the central topic of the issue is the deposition processes, but differently from the past a deeper level of analyses has been added in AQMEII4. That pertains to the addition of diagnostic analysis to each of the participating models. These diagnostics are allowing participants to compare the parameterizations for deposition pathways across all participating systems in an unprecedented level of detail, with comparisons between individual conductance and resistances being carried out for the first time. The diagnostics have been mapped to a common set of land-use types, in order to allow a common analysis of the different deposition parameterizations for a given land-use type.

The AQMEII4 activity goes beyond the comparison of the deposited quantities as has been customary so far and will allow the gathering of insight into the reason for model differences and the efficacy of some schemes compared to others through the comparison with measurements. For the first time the diversity with which the participating models (both point models and the full regional-scale models) describe the underlying surface on which the deposition occurs will be evaluated. This is therefore not a mere model evaluation exercise but one that aims to tackle in a multi-model fashion the most difficult of the four pillars of model evaluation (Dennis et al., 2010), i.e. diagnostic evaluation. The special issue will therefore include papers on process-oriented point model comparisons against deposition supersite data, detailed process-oriented model inter-comparisons of the regional-scale output, and the potential application of model results for ecosystem assessments. An introductory paper (already in preparation) will be the first submission of the special issue, which will describe activity set-up and rationale – an important and crucial preparatory phase which will be referenced by the individual papers that follow.

In recent years, there have been multiple community-level efforts to improve our scientific understanding of the possible effectiveness and effects of solar geoengineering, especially the Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project (GeoMIP) and the Geoengineering Large Ensemble (GLENS). These projects have wide international participation among climate modeling centers and researchers, including developing country researchers participating in the Developing Country Impacts Modelling Analysis for SRM (DECIMALS) fund. By producing simulations available for any interested researcher, these two projects have been highly effective in advancing the state of knowledge of solar geoengineering.

Several of these projects are reaching critical stages. A new round of GeoMIP simulations has recently been released as part of CMIP6. The DECIMALS teams are maturing and are at the stage where they are ready to produce papers, with the possibility that the project will be extended. GLENS simulations are continuing to be analyzed and supplemented with simulations from additional research efforts. To capture the interrelated research amongst these projects, the special issue is set up jointly between Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics and Earth System Dynamics. In ACP, we invite papers that emphasize process-level understanding and stratospheric dynamics; in ESD, submissions on Earth system effects, feedbacks, and impacts (like agriculture or ecosystem responses) are invited.

The absorption of energy by water vapour keeps the average temperature on Earth at a level that makes life possible. However, the average temperature increased in recent decades due to increased greenhouse gas emissions. This anthropogenic increase is amplified by the water vapour feedback. Water vapour is further an important component of the water cycle and indirectly of the energy cycle. The role of water vapour in these cycles in a changing climate needs to be fully understood and quantified. Thus, high-quality observations of water vapour and the characterisation and validation of associated uncertainties are of high importance for climate applications. Topics covered around atmospheric water vapour include, among others, retrieval development, data records, uncertainty characterisation and validation, inter-comparisons, climate applications, and model validation.

This special issue originates from the GEWEX Water Vapor Assessment (G-VAP, http://gewex-vap.org) and is open for all submissions within scope, not just from G-VAP.

Ice nucleation is a particularly hot topic at the moment in atmospheric sciences, with profound implications for the hydrological cycle and climate. However, the detailed links between the atmospheric aerosol chemical and physical character, ice-nucleating particles (INPs), and the ice nucleation processes in different temperature regimes remain open (e.g. Hoose and Möhler, 2012, Knopf et al., 2018). We performed a comprehensive field study in Hyytiälä, Finland, during 2018 (HyICE campaign) with a clear focus on characterizing the INP concentrations in different temperature ranges with a suite of ice nucleation counters (online and offline). The work was complemented with thorough measurement of physical (size distribution 1 nm–10 um, bioaerosol concentrations) and chemical characteristics (high-resolution AMS) of the atmospheric aerosols from nanometre scale to super-micron sizes done at the Station for Measuring Ecosystem – Atmosphere Relations II (SMEAR II) site. The location provides an excellent facility to study INPs as we can compare our data to the 20-year data set already available at the site. The observation period started in February, with the most intensive INP measurements in March–May 2018. We operated a suite of online ice nucleation counters (SPIN, PINE, PINCII) and performed filter sampling at the ground level, above the canopy, and onboard a research aircraft. We continue the filter sampling providing understanding of the seasonality of INP concentrations in the boreal environment. In SMEAR II we have also the weather radar and lidar capacity to address the cloud microphysics within the clouds. These activities enable us 1) to perform an intercomparison between the ice nucleation chambers, 2) to assess the vertical variability of INPs inside the boundary layer and in the free atmosphere, 3) to connect the observed INP concentrations to physical and chemical parameters and aerosol source apportionment and 4) seasonal variability of the INPs in the boreal context, 5) to connect the ground-based INP measurements to the cloud processes aloft, and 6) to develop parameterizations based on our observations and utilize them in models of various scales.