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The Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model version 6 (WACCM6) is a major update of the whole atmosphere modeling capability in the Community Earth System Model (CESM), featuring enhanced physical, chemical and aerosol parameterizations. This work describes WACCM6 and some of the important features of the model. WACCM6 can reproduce many modes of variability and trends in the middle atmosphere, including the quasi‐biennial oscillation, stratospheric sudden warmings, and the evolution of Southern Hemisphere springtime ozone depletion over the twentieth century. WACCM6 can also reproduce the climate and temperature trends of the 20th century throughout the atmospheric column. The representation of the climate has improved in WACCM6, relative to WACCM4. In addition, there are improvements in high‐latitude climate variability at the surface and sea ice extent in WACCM6 over the lower top version of the model (CAM6) that comes from the extended vertical domain and expanded aerosol chemistry in WACCM6, highlighting the importance of the stratosphere and tropospheric chemistry for high‐latitude climate variability. Plain Language Summary: This manuscript describes the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model Version 6 (WACCM6), a chemistry and climate model which extends up to 140 km in the upper atmosphere. WACCM6 reproduces many important features of the climate system, and the addition of detailed chemistry and the higher than normal model top produces slightly improved simulations of the Arctic region. Key Points: WACCM6 is a major upgrade to previous versionsWACCM6 can reproduce many modes of variability and trends in the middle atmosphereWACCM6 provides improvements in high‐latitude climate variability at the surface and sea ice extent over a low top model [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The response of the hydrological cycle to climate forcings can be understood within the atmospheric energy budget framework. In this study precipitation and energy budget responses to five forcing agents are analyzed using 10 climate models from the Precipitation Driver Response Model Intercomparison Project (PDRMIP). Precipitation changes are split into a forcing-dependent fast response and a temperature-driven hydrological sensitivity. Globally, when normalized by top-of-atmosphere (TOA) forcing, fast precipitation changes are most sensitive to strongly absorbing drivers (CO2, black carbon). However, over land fast precipitation changes are most sensitive to weakly absorbing drivers (sulfate, solar) and are linked to rapid circulation changes. Despite this, land-mean fast responses to CO2 and black carbon exhibit more intermodel spread. Globally, the hydrological sensitivity is consistent across forcings, mainly associated with increased longwave cooling, which is highly correlated with intermodel spread. The land-mean hydrological sensitivity is weaker, consistent with limited moisture availability. The PDRMIP results are used to construct a simple model for land-mean and sea-mean precipitation change based on sea surface temperature change and TOA forcing. The model matches well with CMIP5 ensemble mean historical and future projections, and is used to understand the contributions of different drivers. During the twentieth century, temperature-driven intensification of land-mean precipitation has been masked by fast precipitation responses to anthropogenic sulfate and volcanic forcing, consistent with the small observed trend. However, as projected sulfate forcing decreases, and warming continues, land-mean precipitation is expected to increase more rapidly, and may become clearly observable by the mid-twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globally, secondary organic aerosol (SOA) is mostly formed from emissions of biogenic volatile organic compounds (VOCs) by vegetation, but it can be modified by human activities as demonstrated in recent research. Specifically, nitrogen oxides (NOx DNOCNO2/ have been shown to play a critical role in the chemical formation of low volatility compounds. We have updated the SOA scheme in the global NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research) Community Atmospheric Model version 4 with chemistry (CAM4-chem) by implementing a 4-product volatility basis set (VBS) scheme, including NOx-dependent SOA yields and aging parameterizations. Small differences are found for the no-aging VBS and 2-product schemes; large increases in SOA production and the SOA-to-OA ratio are found for the aging scheme. The predicted organic aerosol amounts capture both the magnitude and distribution of US surface annual mean measurements from the Interagency Monitoring of Protected Visual Environments (IMPROVE) network by 50%, and the simulated vertical profiles are within a factor of 2 compared to aerosol mass spectrometer (AMS) measurements from 13 aircraft-based field campaigns across different regions and seasons. We then perform sensitivity experiments to examine how the SOA loading responds to a 50% reduction in anthropogenic nitric oxide (NO) emissions in different regions. We find limited SOA reductions of 0.9- 5.6, 6.4-12.0 and 0.9-2.8% for global, southeast US and Amazon NOx perturbations, respectively. The fact that SOA formation is almost unaffected by changes in NOx can be largely attributed to a limited shift in chemical regime, to buffering in chemical pathways (low- and high-NOx pathways, O3 versus NO3-initiated Oxidation) and to offsetting tendencies in the biogenic versus anthropogenic SOA responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project (GeoMIP) experiment "G4 specified stratospheric aerosols" (short name: G4SSA) is proposed to investigate the impact of stratospheric aerosol geoengineering on atmosphere, chemistry, dynamics, climate, and the environment. In contrast to the earlier G4 GeoMIP experiment, which requires an emission of sulfur dioxide (SO2) into the model, a prescribed aerosol forcing file is provided to the community, to be consistently applied to future model experiments between 2020 and 2100. This stratospheric aerosol distribution, with a total burden of about 2 Tg S has been derived using the ECHAM5-HAM microphysical model, based -1 on a continuous annual tropical emission of 8 Tg SO2 yr- . A ramp-up of geoengineering in 2020 and a ramp-down in 2070 over a period of 2 years are included in the distribution, while a background aerosol burden should be used for the last 3 decades of the experiment. The performance of this experiment using climate and chemistry models in a multi-model comparison framework will allow us to better understand the impact of geoengineering and its abrupt termination after 50 years in a changing environment. The zonal and monthly mean stratospheric aerosol input data set is available at https://www2.acd.ucar.edu/gcm/ geomip-g4-specified-stratospheric-aerosol-data-set. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Community Atmosphere Model (CAM), version 5, is now coupled to extensive tropospheric and stratospheric chemistry, called CAM5-chem, and is available in addition to CAM4-chem in the Community Earth System Model (CESM) version 1.2. Both configurations are well suited as tools for atmospheric-chemistry modeling studies in the troposphere and lower stratosphere, whether with internally derived "free running" (FR) meteorology, or "specified dynamics" (SD). The main focus of this paper is to compare the performance of these configurations against observations from surface, aircraft, and satellite, as well as understand the origin of the identified differences. We partic ularly focus on comparing present-day methane lifetime estimates within the different model configurations, which range between 7.8 years in the SD configuration of CAM5- chem and 8.8 years in the FR configuration of CAM4-chem. We find that tropospheric surface area density is an important factor in controlling the burden of the hydroxyl radical (OH), which causes differences in tropical methane lifetime of about half a year between CAM4-chem and CAM5-chem. In addition, different distributions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) produced from lightning production explain about half of the difference between SD and FR model versions in both CAM4-chem and CAM5-chem. Remaining differences in the tropical OH burden are due to enhanced tropical ozone burden in SD configurations compared to the FR versions, which are not only caused by differences in chemical production or loss, but also by transport and mixing. For future studies, we recommend the use of CAM5-chem, due to improved aerosol description and inclusion of aerosol-cloud interactions. However, smaller tropospheric surface area density in the current version of CAM5-chem compared to CAM4-chem results in larger oxidizing capacity in the troposphere and therefore a shorter methane lifetime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present multi-model global datasets of nitrogen and sulfate deposition covering time periods from 1850 to 2100, calculated within the Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Model Intercomparison Project (ACCMIP). The computed deposition fluxes are compared to surface wet deposition and ice core measurements. We use a new dataset of wet deposition for 2000-2002 based on critical assessment of the quality of existing regional network data. We show that for present day (year 2000 ACCMIP time slice), the ACCMIP results perform similarly to previously published multi-model assessments. For this time slice, we find a multimodel mean deposition of approximately 50 Tg(N) yr-1 from nitrogen oxide emissions, 60 Tg(N) yr-1 from ammonia emissions, and 83 Tg(S) yr-1 from sulfur emissions. The analysis of changes between 1980 and 2000 indicates significant differences between model and measurements over the United States but less so over Europe. This difference points towards a potential misrepresentation of 1980 NH3 emissions over North America. Based on ice core records, the 1850 deposition fluxes agree well with Greenland ice cores, but the change between 1850 and 2000 seems to be overestimated in the Northern Hemisphere for both nitrogen and sulfur species. Using the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) to define the projected climate and atmospheric chemistry related emissions and concentrations, we find large regional nitrogen deposition increases in 2100 in Latin America, Africa and parts of Asia under some of the scenarios considered. Increases in South Asia are especially large, and are seen in all scenarios, with 2100 values more than double their 2000 counterpart in some scenarios and reaching >1300 mg(N)m-2 yr-1 averaged over regional to continental-scale regions in RCP 2.6 and 8.5, 30-50% larger than the values in any region currently (circa 2000). However, sulfur deposition rates in 2100 are in all regions lower than in 2000 in all the RCPs. The new ACCMIP multimodel deposition dataset provides state-of-the-science, consistent and evaluated time slice (spanning 1850-2100) global gridded deposition fields for use in a wide range of climate and ecological studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, a standard test case suite for 2-D linear transport on the sphere was proposed to assess important aspects of accuracy in geophysical fluid dynamics with a "minimal" set of idealized model configurations/runs/diagnostics. Here we present results from 19 state-of-the-art transport scheme formulations based on finite-difference/finite-volume methods as well as emerging (in the context of atmospheric/ oceanographic sciences) Galerkin methods. Discretization grids range from traditional regular latitude-longitude grids to more isotropic domain discretizations such as icosahedral and cubed-sphere tessellations of the sphere. The schemes are eval10 uated using a wide range of diagnostics in idealized flow environments. Accuracy is assessed in single- and two-tracer configurations using conventional error norms as well as novel diagnostics designed for climate and climate-chemistry applications. In addition, algorithmic considerations that may be important for computational efficiency are reported on. The latter is inevitably computing platform dependent, The ensemble of results from a wide variety of schemes presented here helps shed light on the ability of the test case suite diagnostics and flow settings to discriminate between algorithms and provide insights into accuracy in the context of global atmospheric/ ocean modeling. A library of benchmark results is provided to facilitate scheme intercomparison and model development. Simple software and data-sets are made available to facilitate the process of model evaluation and scheme intercomparison. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use simultaneous observations of tropospheric ozone and outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) sensitivity to tropospheric ozone from the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) to evaluate model tropospheric ozone and its effect on OLR simulated by a suite of chemistry-climate models that participated in the Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Model Intercomparison Project (ACCMIP). The ensemble mean of ACCMIP models show a persistent but modest tropospheric ozone low bias (5-20 ppb) in the Southern Hemisphere (SH) and modest high bias (5-10 ppb) in the Northern Hemisphere (NH) relative to TES ozone for 2005-2010. These ozone biases have a significant impact on the OLR. Using TES instantaneous radiative kernels (IRK), we show that the ACCMIP ensemble mean tropospheric ozone low bias leads up to 120mWm-2 OLR high bias locally but zonally compensating errors reduce the global OLR high bias to 39±41mWm-2 relative to TES data. We show that there is a correlation (R2 = 0.59) between the magnitude of the ACCMIP OLR bias and the deviation of the ACCMIP preindustrial to present day (1750-2010) ozone radiative forcing (RF) from the ensemble ozone RF mean. However, this correlation is driven primarily by models whose absolute OLR bias from tropospheric ozone exceeds 100mWm-2. Removing these models leads to a mean ozone radiative forcing of 394±42mWm-2. The mean is about the same and the standard deviation is about 30% lower than an ensemble ozone RF of 384±60mWm-2 derived from 14 of the 16 ACCMIP models reported in a companion ACCMIP study. These results point towards a profitable direction of combining satellite observations and chemistry-climate model simulations to reduce uncertainty in ozone radiative forcing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ozone (O3) from 17 atmospheric chemistry models taking part in the Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Model Intercomparison Project (ACCMIP) has been used to calculate tropospheric ozone radiative forcings (RFs). All models applied a common set of anthropogenic emissions, which are better constrained for the present-day than the past. Future anthropogenic emissions follow the four Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios, which define a relatively narrow range of possible air pollution emissions. We calculate a value for the pre-industrial (1750) to present-day (2010) tropospheric ozone RF of 410mWm-2. The model range of pre-industrial to present-day changes in O3 produces a spread (±1 standard deviation) in RFs of ±17 %. Three different radiation schemes were used - we find differences in RFs between schemes (for the same ozone fields) of ±10 %. Applying two different tropopause definitions gives differences in RFs of ±3 %. Given additional (unquantified) uncertainties associated with emissions, climate-chemistry interactions and land-use change, we estimate an overall uncertainty of ±30% for the tropospheric ozone RF. Experiments carried out by a subset of six models attribute tropospheric ozone RF to increased emissions of methane (44±12 %), nitrogen oxides (31±9 %), carbon monoxide (15±3 %) and non-methane volatile organic compounds (9±2 %); earlier studies attributed more of the tropospheric ozone RF to methane and less to nitrogen oxides. Normalising RFs to changes in tropospheric column ozone, we find a global mean normalised RF of 42mWm-2 DU-1, a value similar to previous work. Using normalised RFs and future tropospheric column ozone projections we calculate future tropospheric ozone RFs (mWm-2; relative to 1750) for the four future scenarios (RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6.0 and RCP8.5) of 350, 420, 370 and 460 (in 2030), and 200, 300, 280 and 600 (in 2100). Models show some coherent responses of ozone to climate change: decreases in the tropical lower troposphere, associated with increases in water vapour; and increases in the sub-tropical to mid-latitude upper troposphere, associated with increases in lightning and stratosphere-to-troposphere transport. Climate change has relatively small impacts on global mean tropospheric ozone RF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Model Intercomparison Project (ACCMIP) examined the short-lived drivers of climate change in current climate models. Here we evaluate the 10 ACCMIP models that included aerosols, 8 of which also participated in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5). The models reproduce present-day total aerosol optical depth (AOD) relatively well, though many are biased low. Contributions from individual aerosol components are quite different, however, and most models underestimate east Asian AOD. The models capture most 1980-2000 AOD trends well, but underpredict increases over the Yellow/ Eastern Sea. They strongly underestimate absorbing AOD in many regions. We examine both the direct radiative forcing (RF) and the forcing including rapid adjustments (effective radiative forcing; ERF, including direct and indirect effects). The models' all-sky 1850 to 2000 global mean annual average total aerosol RF is (mean; range) -0.26Wm-2; -0.06 to -0.49Wm-2. Screening based on model skill in capturing observed AOD yields a best estimate of -0.42Wm-2; -0.33 to -0.50Wm-2, including adjustment for missing aerosol components in some models. Many ACCMIP and CMIP5 models appear to produce substantially smaller aerosol RF than this best estimate. Climate feedbacks contribute substantially (35 to -58 %) to modeled historical aerosol RF. The 1850 to 2000 aerosol ERF is -1.17Wm-2; -0.71 to -1.44Wm-2. Thus adjustments, including clouds, typically cause greater forcing than direct RF. Despite this, the multi-model spread relative to the mean is typically the same for ERF as it is for RF, or even smaller, over areas with substantial forcing. The largest 1850 to 2000 negative aerosol RF and ERF values are over and near Europe, south and east Asia and North America. ERF, however, is positive over the Sahara, the Karakoram, high Southern latitudes and especially the Arctic. Global aerosol RF peaks in most models around 1980, declining thereafter with only weak sensitivity to the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP). One model, however, projects approximately stable RF levels, while two show increasingly negative RF due to nitrate (not included in most models). Aerosol ERF, in contrast, becomes more negative during 1980 to 2000. During this period, increased Asian emissions appear to have a larger impact on aerosol ERF than European and North American decreases due to their being upwind of the large, relatively pristine Pacific Ocean. There is no clear relationship between historical aerosol ERF and climate sensitivity in the CMIP5 subset of ACCMIP models. In the ACCMIP/CMIP5 models, historical aerosol ERF of about -0.8 to -1.5Wm-2 is most consistent with observed historical warming. Aerosol ERF masks a large portion of greenhouse forcing during the late 20th and early 21st century at the global scale. Regionally, aerosol ERF is so large that net forcing is negative over most industrialized and biomass burning regions through 1980, but remains strongly negative only over east and southeast Asia by 2000. Net forcing is strongly positive by 1980 over most deserts, the Arctic, Australia, and most tropical oceans. Both the magnitude of and area covered by positive forcing expand steadily thereafter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of the Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Model Intercomparison Project (ACCMIP), we evaluate the historical black carbon (BC) aerosols simulated by 8 ACCMIP models against observations including 12 ice core records, long-term surface mass concentrations, and recent Arctic BC snowpack measurements. We also estimate BC albedo forcing by performing additional simulations using offline models with prescribed meteorology from 1996-2000. We evaluate the vertical profile of BC snow concentrations from these offline simulations using the recent BC snowpack measurements. Despite using the same BC emissions, global BC burden differs by approximately a factor of 3 among models due to differences in aerosol removal parameterizations and simulated meteorology: 34 Gg to 103 Gg in 1850 and 82 Gg to 315 Gg in 2000. However, global BC burden from preindustrial to present-day increases by 2.5-3 times with little variation among models, roughly matching the 2.5-fold increase in total BC emissions during the same period. We find a large divergence among models at both Northern Hemisphere (NH) and Southern Hemisphere (SH) high latitude regions for BC burden and at SH high latitude regions for deposition fluxes. The ACCMIP simulations match the observed BC surface mass concentrations well in Europe and North America except at Ispra. However, models fail to predict the Arctic BC seasonality due to severe underestimations during winter and spring. The simulated vertically resolved BC snow concentrations are, on average, within a factor of 2-3 of the BC snowpack measurements except for Greenland and the Arctic Ocean. For the ice core evaluation, models tend to adequately capture both the observed temporal trends and the magnitudes at Greenland sites. However, models fail to predict the decreasing trend of BC depositions/ice core concentrations from the 1950s to the 1970s in most Tibetan Plateau ice cores. The distinct temporal trend at the Tibetan Plateau ice cores indicates a strong influence from Western Europe, but the modeled BC increases in that period are consistent with the emission changes in Eastern Europe, Middle East, South and East Asia. At the Alps site, simulated BC suggests a strong influence from Europe, which agrees with the Alps ice core observations. At Zuoqiupu on the Tibetan Plateau, models successfully simulate the higher BC concentrations observed during the non-monsoon season compared to the monsoon season but overpredict BC in both seasons. Despite a large divergence in BC deposition at two Antarctic ice core sites, some models with a BC lifetime of less than 7 days are able to capture the observed concentrations. In 2000 relative to 1850, globally and annually averaged BC surface albedo forcing from the offline simulations ranges from 0.014 to 0.019Wm-2 among the ACCMIP models. Comparing offline and online BC albedo forcings computed by some of the same models, we find that the global annual mean can vary by up to a factor of two because of different aerosol models or different BC-snow parameterizations and snow cover. The spatial distributions of the offline BC albedo forcing in 2000 show especially high BC forcing (i.e., over 0.1Wm-2) over Manchuria, Karakoram, and most of the Former USSR. Models predict the highest global annual mean BC forcing in 1980 rather than 2000, mostly driven by the high fossil fuel and biofuel emissions in the Former USSR in 1980. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new generation GISS climate model includes fully interactive chemistry related to ozone in historical and future simulations, and interactive methane in future simulations. Evaluation of ozone, its tropospheric precursors, and methane shows that the model captures much of the largescale spatial structure seen in recent observations. While the model is much improved compared with the previous chemistry-climate model, especially for ozone seasonality in the stratosphere, re is still slightly too rapid stratospheric circulation, too little stratosphere-to-troposphere ozone flux in the Southern Hemisphere and an Antarctic ozone hole that is too large and persists too long. Quantitative metrics of spatial and temporal correlations with satellite datasets as well as spatial autocorrelation to examine transport and mixing are presented to document improvements in model skill and provide a benchmark for future evaluations. The difference in radiative forcing (RF) calculated using modeled tropospheric ozone versus tropospheric ozone observed by TES is only 0.016Wm-2. Historical 20th Century simulations show a steady increase in whole atmosphere ozone RF through 1970 after which there is a decrease through 2000 due to stratospheric ozone depletion. Ozone forcing increases throughout the 21st century under RCP8.5 owing to a projected recovery of stratospheric ozone depletion and increases in methane, but decreases under RCP4.5 and 2.6 due to reductions in emissions of other ozone precursors. RF from methane is 0.05 to 0.18Wm-2 higher in our model calculations than in the RCP RF estimates. The surface temperature response to ozone through 1970 follows the increase in forcing due to tropospheric ozone. After that time, surface temperatures decrease as ozone RF declines due to stratospheric depletion. The stratospheric ozone depletion also induces substantial changes in surface winds and the Southern Ocean circulation, which may play a role in a slightly stronger response per unit forcing during later decades. Tropical precipitation shifts south during boreal summer from 1850 to 1970, but then shifts northward from 1970 to 2000, following upper tropospheric temperature gradients more strongly than those at the surface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Results from simulations performed for the Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Modeling Intercomparison Project (ACCMIP) are analysed to examine how OH and methane lifetime may change from present day to the future, under different climate and emissions scenarios. Present day (2000) mean tropospheric chemical lifetime derived from the ACCMIP multi-model mean is 9.8±1.6 yr (9.3±0.9 yr when only including selected models), lower than a recent observationally-based estimate, but with a similar range to previous multi-model estimates. Future model projections are based on the four Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs), and the results also exhibit a large range. Decreases in global methane lifetime of 4.5±9.1% are simulated for the scenario with lowest radiative forcing by 2100 (RCP 2.6), while increases of 8.5±10.4% are simulated for the scenario with highest radiative forcing (RCP 8.5). In this scenario, the key driver of the evolution of OH and methane lifetime is methane itself, since its concentration more than doubles by 2100 and it consumes much of the OH that exists in the troposphere. Stratospheric ozone recovery, which drives tropospheric OH decreases through photolysis modifications, also plays a partial role. In the other scenarios, where methane changes are less drastic, the interplay between various competing drivers leads to smaller and more diverse OH and methane lifetime responses, which are difficult to attribute. For all scenarios, regional OH changes are even more variable, with the most robust feature being the large decreases over the remote oceans in RCP8.5. Through a regression analysis, we suggest that differences in emissions of non-methane volatile organic compounds and in the simulation of photolysis rates may be the main factors causing the differences in simulated present day OH and methane lifetime. Diversity in predicted changes between present day and future OH was found to be associated more strongly with differences in modelled temperature and stratospheric ozone changes. Finally, through perturbation experiments we calculated an OH feedback factor (F) of 1.24 from present day conditions (1.50 from 2100 RCP8.5 conditions) and a climate feedback on methane lifetime of 0.33±0.13 yrK-1, on average. Models that did not include interactive stratospheric ozone effects on photolysis showed a stronger sensitivity to climate, as they did not account for negative effects of climate-driven stratospheric ozone recovery on tropospheric OH, which would have partly offset the overall OH/methane lifetime response to climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Model Intercomparison Project (ACCMIP) consists of a series of time slice experiments targeting the long-term changes in atmospheric composition between 1850 and 2100, with the goal of documenting composition changes and the associated radiative forcing. In this overview paper, we introduce the ACCMIP activity, the various simulations performed (with a requested set of 14) and the associated model output. The 16 ACCMIP models have a wide range of horizontal and vertical resolutions, vertical extent, chemistry schemes and interaction with radiation and clouds. While anthropogenic and biomass burning emissions were specified for all time slices in the ACCMIP protocol, it is found that the natural emissions are responsible for a significant range across models, mostly in the case of ozone precursors. The analysis of selected present-day climate diagnostics (precipitation, temperature, specific humidity and zonal wind) reveals biases consistent with state-of-the-art climate models. The modelto- model comparison of changes in temperature, specific humidity and zonal wind between 1850 and 2000 and between 2000 and 2100 indicates mostly consistent results. However, models that are clear outliers are different enough from the other models to significantly affect their simulation of atmospheric chemistry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measurements of ozone vertical profiles are valuable for the evaluation of atmospheric chemistry models and contribute to the understanding of the processes controlling the distribution of tropospheric ozone. The longest record of ozone vertical profiles is provided by ozone sondes, which have a typical frequency of 4 to 12 profiles a month. Here we quantify the uncertainty introduced by low frequency sampling in the determination of means and trends. To do this, the high frequencyMOZAIC (Measurements of OZone, water vapor, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides by inservice AIrbus airCraft) profiles over airports, such as Frankfurt, have been subsampled at two typical ozone sonde frequencies of 4 and 12 profiles per month. We found the lowest sampling uncertainty on seasonal means at 700 hPa over Frankfurt, with around 5% for a frequency of 12 profiles per month and 10% for a 4 profile-a-month frequency. However the uncertainty can reach up to 15 and 29% at the lowest altitude levels. As a consequence, the sampling uncertainty at the lowest frequency could be higher than the typical 10% accuracy of the ozone sondes and should be carefully considered for observation comparison and model evaluation. We found that the 95% confidence limit on the seasonal mean derived from the subsample created is similar to the sampling uncertainty and suggest to use it as an estimate of the sampling uncertainty. Similar results are found at six other Northern Hemisphere sites. We show that the sampling substantially impacts on the inter-annual variability and the trend derived over the period 1998-2008 both in magnitude and in sign throughout the troposphere. Also, a tropical case is discussed using the MOZAIC profiles taken over Windhoek, Namibia between 2005 and 2008. For this site, we found that the sampling uncertainty in the free troposphere is around 8 and 12% at 12 and 4 profiles a month respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the different simulation methods used in the Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Model Intercomparison Project (ACCMIP). The study introduces several simulation approaches to determine the long-term changes in the atmospheric composition between 1850 and 2100 though the ACCMIP project. It outlines the result of the study, which indicates that the present-day climate diagnostics are consistent with the state-of-the-art climate models.

The article presents a study that demonstrates the capabilities of Parallel Offline Radiative Transfer (PORT) model in diagnosing radiative forcing. It states that the model separates the radiation code from the Community Atmosphere Model (CAM4) in the Community Earth System Model (CESM1). It also notes that the model can effectively provide accurate computation of radiative forcing from doubling of carbon dioxide from the ozone concentration.

This work evaluates the IASI CO product against independent in-situ aircraft data from the MOZAIC program and the POLARCAT aircraft campaign. The validation is carried out by analysing the impact of assimilation of eight months of IASI CO columns retrieved for the period of May to December 2008 into the global chemistry transport model LMDz-INCA. A modelling system based on a sub-optimal Kalman filter was developed and a specific treatment that takes into account the representativeness of observations at the scale of the model grid is applied to the IASI CO columns and associated errors before their assimilation in the model. Comparisons of the assimilated CO profiles with in situ CO measurements indicate that the assimilation leads to a considerable improvement of the model simulations in the middle troposphere as compared with a control run with no assimilation. Model biases in the simulation of background values are reduced and improvement in the simulation of very high concentrations is observed. The improvement is due to the transport by the model of the information present in the IASI CO retrievals. Our analysis also shows the impact of assimilation of CO on the representation of transport into the Arctic region during the POLARCAT summer campaign. A considerable increase in CO mixing ratios over the Asian source region was observed when assimilation was used leading to much higher values of CO during the cross-pole transport episode. These higher values are in good agreement with data from the POLARCAT flights that sampled this plume. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the description and evaluation of interactive atmospheric chemistry in the global Community Atmosphere Model (CAM), the atmospheric component of the Community Earth System Model (CESM). It shows a variety of configurations for the representation of tropospheric and stratospheric chemistry, wet removal, and online and offline meteorology. It states that simulation results illustrating these configurations are compared with surface, aircraft and satellite observations.