Reducing the Uncertainties of Climate Projections: High-Resolution Climate Modeling of Aerosol and Climate Interactions on the Regional Scale Using COSMO-ART

Abstract

Aim of this project is to investigate the impact of aerosol in high resolution climate runs. Aerosols and their interactions with radiation and clouds represents in the moment one of the major uncertainties in our understanding of climate system as they can described only roughly in coarse resolution global models. The online coupled comprehensive chemistry model system COSMO-ART already showed in several case studies the potential of closing this gap. In order to apply it on decadal climate time scales the use of high performance computing becomes a necessity. We propose to perform decadal climate simulations on two domains. A first one covers Europe at a horizontal resolution of 14 km for a period from 1995 to 2005. The second domains covers Germany at a horizontal resolution of 2.8 km for the same period and it will be forced at the boundaries by the results of the first domain. On the European domain only the interactions of aerosols and radiation will be represented, whereas in the high-resolution German domain, the simulated aerosol can additionally act as cloud condensation and ice nuclei. The results will be obtained will be unprecedented and lead to a better understanding of changes in the regional climate of Europe and Germany. Up to now model implementation, some technical testing and scaling results could be performed.