Impact

1. Assessing CAM5 Physics Suite in WRF-Chem Model • Objective • Investigate the resolution dependence of CAM5 physics • Evaluate the CAM5 physics suite running at mesoscale resolution • Approach • Port the CAM5 physics suite into WRF, enabling a more efficient framework for improving the climate model parameterizations • Simplify model evaluation against ARM observations, field campaign measurements, and satellite retrievals WRF with CAM5 physics provides the modeling community a new tool for evaluating various physics packages across scales and downscaling. • Impact • Increasing resolution reduces some model biases in CAM5, such as low aerosol concentration near the surface in the Arctic and high cloud susceptibility to aerosols • This framework can be used to guide future parameterization development that improves the representation of aerosol, cloud, and aerosol-cloud interaction processes and their sub-grid variability. And, it provides a consistent methodology for regional downscaling modeling. Ma P-L, PJ Rasch, JD Fast, RC Easter, WI Gustafson Jr, X Liu, SJ Ghan, and B Singh. 2014. “Assessing the CAM5 Physics Suite in the WRF-Chem Model: Implementation, resolution sensitivity, and a first evaluation for a regional case study.” Geoscientific Model Development 7: 755-778 DOI:10.5194/gmd-7-755-2014.