An improved representation of aerosol acidity in the ECMWF IFS-COMPO 49R1 through the integration of EQSAM4Climv12.

The atmospheric composition forecasting system used to produce the CAMS forecasts of global aerosol and trace gases distributions, IFS-COMPO, undergoes periodic upgrades. In this paper we describe the development of the future operational cycle 49R1, and focus on the implementation of the thermodynamical model EQSAM4Clim version 12 for describing gas-aerosol partitioning processes for nitrate and ammonium and for providing diagnostic aerosol, cloud and precipitation pH values at global scale. This information on aerosol acidity influences tropospheric chemistry processes associated with aqueous phase chemistry and wet deposition. The other updates to cycle 49R1 include modifications to the description of Desert Dust, Sea-salt aerosols, Carbonaceous aerosols and the size description for the calculation of aerosol optics. The implementation of EQSAM4Clim significantly improves the partitioning of reactive nitrogen compounds decreasing surface concentrations of both nitrate and ammonium, which reduces PM2.5 biases for Europe, U.S. and China, especially during summertime. For aerosol optical depth there is generally a decrease in the simulated biases for wintertime, and for some regions an increase in the bias for summertime. Improvements in the simulated Ångström exponent is noted for almost all regions, resulting in generally a good agreement with observations. The diagnostic aerosol and precipitation pH calculated by EQSAM4Clim have been compared against results from previous simulations (for aerosol pH) and against ground observations (for precipitation pH), with the temporal distribution in the annual mean values showing good agreement against the regional observational datasets. The use of aerosol acidity only has a relatively smaller impact on the aqueous-phase production of sulphate when compared to the changes in gas-to-particle partitioning brought by the use of EQSAM4Clim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]