POLARCAT Model Intercomparison Project (POLMIP)
Motivation
A large suite of observations was collected during the International Polar Year (2008) as part of the international POLARCAT (POLar study using Aircraft, Remote sensing, surface measurements and modelling of Climate, chemistry, Aerosols and Transport) consortium of field experiments. The POLARCAT Model Intercomparison Project (POLMIP) was organized with the goal of exploiting this large data set to comprehensively evaluate several global chemistry models and to better understand the causes of model deficiencies at high latitudes.
Special Issue of Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics on POLARCAT
POLARCAT Field Campaigns
- ARCTAS: NASA DC-8 and P-3 (Data Archive)
- ARCPAC: NOAA WP-3 (Data Archive)
- ISDAC: DOE
- GRACE: DLR Falcon
- France: ATR-42
POLMIP Models
| Model | Resolution | Meteorology | Chemistry | Investigators |
| CAM4-chem | 1.9ox2.5o, 56 levels | MERRA | MOZART-4, bulk aerosols | Simone Tilmes, Louisa Emmons (NCAR) |
| CAM5-chem | 1.9ox2.5o, 56 levels | MERRA | MOZART-4, modal aerosol model | Simone Tilmes, Louisa Emmons (NCAR) |
| C-IFS | 1.125ox1.125o, 60 levels | ECMWF | tropospheric, CB05 | Johannes Flemming (ECMWF) |
| GEOS-Chem | 2ox2.5o, 47 levels | GEOS-5 | tropospheric, 100 species | Jingqiu Mao (NOAA/GFDL & Princeton Univ.) |
| GMI-GEOS5 | 2ox2.5o, 72 levels | GEOS-5 | tropospheric and stratospheric, 154 species, GOCART aerosols | Bryan Duncan, Sarah Strode, Stephen Steenrod (NASA Goddard) |
| LMDZ-INCA | 1.9ox3.75o, 39 levels | ERA-Interim | tropospheric, 85 species, aerosols | Solene Turquety (IPSL, CNRS) |
| MOZART-4 | 1.9ox2.5o, 56 levels | MERRA | tropospheric, 103 species, bulk aerosols | Louisa Emmons (NCAR) |
| TM5 | 2ox3o,60 levels | ECMWF | tropospheric, CB05 | Vincent Huijnen (KNMI) |
| TOMCAT | 2.8ox2.8o, 31 levels | ERA-Interim | tropospheric, 82 species | Steve Arnold, Sarah Monks (Univ. of Leeds) |
| SMHI-MATCH | 0.75ox0.75o, 35 levels, NH | ERA-Interim | tropospheric, 61 species | Joakim Langner (SMHI) |
| WRF-Chem |
100km & 50km, 65 levels to 50 hPa, Canada |
WRF/NCEP FNL | MOZART, GOCART aerosols | Jennie Thomas (LATMOS, CNRS) |
Model output is available upon request to Louisa Emmons.
POLMIP Emissions
The anthropogenic emissions are from the inventory provided by D. Streets (Argonne National Lab) and University of Iowa for ARCTAS (Available at U. Iowa). This inventory is a composite of regional inventories, including Zhang et al. (2009) for Asia, USNEI 2002 and CAC 2005 for North America, and EMEP 2006 expert emissions (www.ceip.at) for Europe. Missing regions and species were filled with EDGAR 3.2FT2000. Only total volatile organic compounds (VOCs) were provided with this inventory, so speciation was based on the VOC speciation of the RETRO inventory as in (Lamarque et al., 2010). Biomass burning emissions are from the Fire Inventory of NCAR (FINN), which are based on MODIS fire counts and available daily (Wiedinmyer et al., 2011). Other emissions (biogenic, ocean, volcano) were derived from the MACCity inventory.
POLMIP Publications
Arnold, S. R., Emmons, L. K., Monks, S. A., Law, K. S., Ridley, D. A., Turquety, S., Tilmes, S., Thomas, J. L., Bouarar, I., Flemming, J., Huijnen, V., Mao, J., Duncan, B. N., Steenrod, S., Yoshida, Y., Langner, J., and Long, Y.: Biomass burning influence on high-latitude tropospheric ozone and reactive nitrogen in summer 2008: a multi-model analysis based on POLMIP simulations, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 15, 6047-6068, doi:10.5194/acp-15-6047-2015, 2015. (online paper)
Monks, S. A., Arnold, S. R., Emmons, L. K., Law, K. S., Turquety, S., Duncan, B. N., Flemming, J., Huijnen, V., Tilmes, S., Langner, J., Mao, J., Long, Y., Thomas, J. L., Steenrod, S. D., Raut, J. C., Wilson, C., Chipperfield, M. P., Diskin, G. S., Weinheimer, A., Schlager, H., and Ancellet, G.: Multi-model study of chemical and physical controls on transport of anthropogenic and biomass burning pollution to the Arctic, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 15, 3575-3603, doi:10.5194/acp-15-3575-2015, 2015. (online paper)
Emmons, L. K., Arnold, S. R., Monks, S. A., Huijnen, V., Tilmes, S., Law, K. S., Thomas, J. L., Raut, J.-C., Bouarar, I., Turquety, S., Long, Y., Duncan, B., Steenrod, S., Strode, S., Flemming, J., Mao, J., Langner, J., Thompson, A. M., Tarasick, D., Apel, E. C., Blake, D. R., Cohen, R. C., Dibb, J., Diskin, G. S., Fried, A., Hall, S. R., Huey, L. G., Weinheimer, A. J., Wisthaler, A., Mikoviny, T., Nowak, J., Peischl, J., Roberts, J. M., Ryerson, T., Warneke, C., and Helmig, D.: The POLARCAT Model Intercomparison Project (POLMIP): overview and evaluation with observations, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 15, 6721-6744, doi:10.5194/acp-15-6721-2015, 2015. (online paper)