References

ACP

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

ACP

1680-7324

Copernicus GmbH

Göttingen, Germany

10.5194/acp-8-2741-2008

Cloud system resolving model study of the roles of deep convection for photo-chemistry in the TOGA COARE/CEPEX region

Salzmann

¹ Lawrence

M. G.

¹ Phillips

V. T. J.

² Donner

L. J.

Max-Planck-Institute for Chemistry, Department of Atmospheric Chemistry, PO Box 3060, 55020 Mainz, Germany

Department of Meteorology, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2525 Correa Road, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA

Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, NOAA, Princeton University, PO Box 308, Princeton, NJ 08542, USA

22 05 2008

8 10 2741 2757

This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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A cloud system resolving model including photo-chemistry (CSRMC) has been developed based on a prototype version of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and is used to study influences of deep convection on chemistry in the TOGA COARE/CEPEX region. Lateral boundary conditions for trace gases are prescribed from global chemistry-transport simulations, and the vertical advection of trace gases by large scale dynamics, which is not reproduced in a limited area cloud system resolving model, is taken into account. The influences of deep convective transport and of lightning on NOx, O3, and HOx(=HO2+OH), in the vicinity of the deep convective systems are investigated in a 7-day 3-D 248×248 km2 horizontal domain simulation and several 2-D sensitivity runs with a 500 km horizontal domain. Mid-tropospheric entrainment is more important on average for the upward transport of O3 in the 3-D run than in the 2-D runs, but at the same time undiluted O3-poor air from the marine boundary layer reaches the upper troposphere more frequently in the 3-D run than in the 2-D runs, indicating the presence of undiluted convective cores. In all runs, in situ lightning is found to have only minor impacts on the local O3 budget. Near zero O3 volume mixing ratios due to the reaction with lightning-produced NO are only simulated in a 2-D sensitivity run with an extremely high number of NO molecules per flash, which is outside the range of current estimates. The fraction of NOx chemically lost within the domain varies between 20 and 24% in the 2-D runs, but is negligible in the 3-D run, in agreement with a lower average NOx concentration in the 3-D run despite a greater number of flashes. Stratosphere to troposphere transport of O3 is simulated to occur episodically in thin filaments in the 2-D runs, but on average net upward transport of O3 from below ~16 km is simulated in association with mean large scale ascent in the region. Ozone profiles in the TOGA COARE/CEPEX region are suggested to be strongly influenced by the intra-seasonal (Madden-Julian) oscillation.

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