Aerosol dynamics using the quadrature method of moments: comparing several quadrature schemes with particle-resolved simulation

The method of moments (MOM) is a statistically based alternative to sectional and modal methods for aerosol simulation. The MOM is highly efficient as the aerosol distribution is represented by its lower-order moments and only these, not the full distribution itself, are tracked during simulation. Quadrature is introduced to close the moment equations under very general growth laws and to compute aerosol physical and optical properties directly from moments. In this paper the quadrature method of moments (QMOM) is used in a bivariate test tracking of aerosol mixing state. Two aerosol populations, one enriched in soot and the other in sulfate, are allowed to interact through coagulation to form a generally-mixed third particle population. Quadratures of varying complexity (including two candidate schemes for use in climate models) are described and compared with benchmark results obtained by using particle- resolved simulation. Low-order quadratures are found to be highly accurate, and Gauss and Gauss-Radau quadratures appear to give nested lower and upper bounds, respectively, to aerosol mixing rate. These results suggest that the QMOM makes it feasible to represent the generallymixed states of aerosols and track their evolution in climate models.