Uncertainties in Global Aerosol Simulations: Assessment Using Three Meteorological Datasets

Current global aerosol models use different physical and chemical schemes and parameters, different meteorological fields, and often different emission sources. Since the physical and chemical parameterization schemes are often tuned to obtain results that are consistent with observations, it is difficult to assess the true uncertainty due to meteorology alone. Under the framework of the NASA global modeling initiative (GMI), the differences and uncertainties in aerosol simulations (for sulfate, organic carbon, black carbon, dust and sea salt) solely due to different meteorological fields are analyzed and quantified. Three meteorological datasets available from the NASA DAO GCM, the GISS-II GCM, and the NASA finite volume GCM (FVGCM) are used to drive the same aerosol model. The global sulfate and mineral dust burdens with FVGCM fields are 40% and 20% less than those with DAO and GISS fields, respectively due to its heavier rainfall. Meanwhile, the sea salt burden predicted with FVGCM fields is 56% and 43% higher than those with DAO and GISS, respectively, due to its stronger convection especially over the Southern Hemispheric Ocean. Sulfate concentrations at the surface in the Northern Hemisphere extratropics and in the middle to upper troposphere differ by more than a factor of 3 between the three meteorological datasets. The agreement between model calculated and observed aerosol concentrations in the industrial regions (e.g., North America and Europe) is quite similar for all three meteorological datasets. Away from the source regions, however, the comparisons with observations differ greatly for DAO, FVGCM and GISS, and the performance of the model using different datasets varies largely depending on sites and species. Global annual average aerosol optical depth at 550 nm is 0.120-0.131 for the three meteorological datasets. However, the contributions from different aerosol components differ significantly, which reflects differences in the aerosol spatial distributions. The global annual average anthropogenic and all-sky aerosol direct forcing at the top-of- the atmosphere is estimated to be -0.75, -0.35, -0.40 W m-2 respectively for DAO, FVGCM, and GISS fields.