Aerosol optical properties from ten earth system models for the year 2010

María A. Burgos, Elisabeth J. Andrews, Gloria Titos, Angela Benedetti, Huisheng Bian, Virginie Buchard, Gabriele Curci, Zak Kipling, Alf Kirkevåg, Harri Kokkola, Anton Laakso, Julie Letertre-Danczak, Marianne T. Lund, Hitoshi Matsui, Gunnar Myhre, Cynthia Randles, Twan van Noije, Kai Zhang, Paul Zieger

This dataset presents the time series of modeled aerosol optical properties (light absorption and extinction) from ten earth system models.

The dataset covers the year 2010 and contains the above mentioned optical properties at wavelengths λ = 440, 550, and 870 nm and for different values of the relative humidity (RH = 0, and between 40 – 85 %). The variables are given for a variety of grid points representing latitude and longitude points covering the whole globe (for eight of the models) or given locations (the remaining two models).

The dataset can be used to evaluate models against in-situ measurements of aerosol optical properties.

Citation

María A. Burgos, Elisabeth J. Andrews, Gloria Titos, Angela Benedetti, Huisheng Bian, Virginie Buchard, Gabriele Curci, Zak Kipling, Alf Kirkevåg, Harri Kokkola, Anton Laakso, Julie Letertre-Danczak, Marianne T. Lund, Hitoshi Matsui, Gunnar Myhre, Cynthia Randles, Twan van Noije, Kai Zhang, Paul Zieger (2020) Aerosol optical properties from ten earth system models for the year 2010. Dataset version 2. Bolin Centre Database. https://doi.org/10.17043/burgos-2020-aerosol-esm-2

References

Burgos, M. A., Andrews, E. J., Titos, G., Benedetti, A., Bian, H., Buchard, V., Curci, G., Kipling, Z., Kirkevåg, A., Kokkola, H., Laakso, A., Letertre-Danczak, J., Lund, M. T., Matsui, H., Myhre, G., Randles, C., Schulz, M., van Noije, T., Zhang, K., Alados-Arboledas, L., Baltensperger, U., Jefferson, A., Sherman, J., Sun, J., Weingartner, E., Zieger, P. (2020). A global model-measurement evaluation of particle light scattering coefficients at elevated relative humidity. Atmos. Chem. Phys. (Accepted for publication)

Data description

The dataset is composed of 2424 netCDF (.nc) files containing multi-wavelength (λ = 440, 550, and 870 nm) particle light absorption and extinction coefficients for the year 2010. For λ = 550 there are, in addition, files for different values of relative humidity, for dry (RH = 0 %) and wet conditions (RH ranging from 40 to 85 %). Total size of dataset: 57 GB.

The ten earth system models included in the dataset are:

1. Community Atmosphere Model version 5 (CAM5)
2. Aerosol Two-dimensional bin module for foRmation and Aging Simulation (CAM-ATRAS)
3. Georgia Institute of Technology-Goddard Global Ozone Chemistry Aerosol Radiation and Transport model (GEOS-GOCART)
4. GEOS-Chem model (GEOS-Chem)
5. Tracer Model (TM5)
6. Oslo chemistry-transport model (OsloCTM3)
7. European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast - Integrated Forecasting20 System model (ECMWF-IFS) run in the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service configuration
8. Global general circulation model ECHAM6 with the SALSA module (ECHAM6.3-SALSA2.0)
9. CAM5.3-Oslo model (CAM-OSLO)
10. Goddard Earth Observing System with the MERRA Aerosol Reanalysis (GEOS-MERRAero)

For detailed information about data for each model, please see the associated README file.

Comments

This work is part of the AeroCom INSITU project and is a collaboration between:

• Stockholm University, Sweden
• U.S. Department of Energy, USA

and

• Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Studies, University of Colorado, Boulder, USA
• Andalusian Institute for Earth System Research, University of Granada, Granada, Spain
• European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Reading, UK
• NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, USA
• University of Maryland Baltimore County, Maryland, USA
• GESTAR/Universities Space Research Association, Columbia, USA
• Dipartimento di Scienze Fisiche e Chimiche, Universita’ degli Studi dell’Aquila, L’Aquila, Italy
• Centre of Excellence CETEMPS, Università degli Studi dell’Aquila, L’Aquila, Italy
• Norwegian Meteorological Institute, Oslo, Norway
• Finnish Meteorological Institute, Kuopio, Finland
• Center for International Climate Research, Oslo, Norway
• Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan
• Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, De Bilt, Netherlands
• Earth Systems Analysis and Modeling, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA.

Please, cite the publication by Burgos et al. (2020) when using this dataset.

Version history

Version 2

This version contains corrected data to account for the known errors in version 1. The models with corrected data are ECMWF-IFS and OsloCTM3. For all other models, the data are the same as in version 1. Also, Dr. Zak Kipling and Dr. Julie Letertre-Danczak have been added as data creators. This version was used in the final accepted and published paper by Burgos et al. (2020).

Version 1

Initial release. After the release, it was found that the data files from the models ECMWF-IFS and OsloCTM3 are not valid. This version was used in the preprint discussion paper by Burgos et al. (2020).