A new parameterization of ice heterogeneous nucleation coupled to aerosol chemistry in WRF-Chem model version 3.5.1: evaluation through the ISDAC measurements.

In the Arctic, during polar night and early spring, ice clouds are separated into two leading types: (1) TIC1 clouds characterized by large concentration of very small crystals, and TIC2 clouds characterized by low concentration of large ice crystals. Using suitable parameterization of heterogeneous ice nucleation is essential for properly representing ice cloud in meteorological and climate model and subsequently understanding their interactions with aerosols and radiation. Here, we describe a new parameterization for ice crystals formation by heterogeneous nucleation coupled to aerosols chemistry in WRF-Chem. The parameterization is implemented in the Milbrandt and Yau's two-moment cloud microphysics scheme and we assess how the WRF-Chem model responds to the real time interaction between chemistry and the new parameterization. Well-documented reference cases provided us in situ data from the spring 2008 Indirect and Semi-Direct Aerosol Campaign (ISDAC) campaign over Alaska. Our analysis reveals that the new parameterization clearly improves the representation of the IWC in polluted or unpolluted air masses and shows the poor performance of the reference parameterization in representing ice clouds with low IWC. The new parameterization is, thus able to represent TIC1 and TIC2 microphysical characteristics at the top of the clouds were heterogeneous ice nucleation is most likely occurring even knowing the bias of simulated aerosols by WRF-Chem over Arctic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]