Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors.
Source: Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems
In the United States, air pollution includes contributions from multiple local human and natural sources plus remote sources such as wildfire smoke transported from Canada, dust plumes from Africa, and intercontinental pollution from Asia. Accurate projection of future climate and air quality at scales relevant to local and regional stakeholders requires a seamless modeling system that can provide detailed information over a targeted region, while still integrating the global Earth system components in a computationally efficient manner. Addressing these challenges, Lin et al. [2024] present a new variable-resolution global chemistry-climate model developed at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL).
As an example of the scientific challenge: global climate change is leading to more hot and dry weather with resulting droughts creating dust-prone bare lands or stressing plants, making them less able to remove ozone pollution from the air. These effects are included in this model, with a particular focus on integrating physical, chemical, and biological components at high spatial resolution to understand Earth system feedback on U.S. air quality in a changing climate.
In contrast with the global climate models contributing to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report in 2021, this model features 10 times finer spatial resolution over the contiguous U.S. Notably, this model reduces the central U.S. dry-and-warm bias that has persisted in many generations of climate models. Improved processes at high spatial resolution allow the model to better represent U.S. regional rainfall extremes, drought, and severe air pollution events, including haze and wildfire smoke in California’s Central Valley. GFDL’s applications of this model enhance our ability to understand Earth system feedback and promote the development of improved air quality forecasting with applications to public safety, transportation, and agriculture.
Citation: Lin, M., Horowitz, L. W., Zhao, M., Harris, L., Ginoux, P., Dunne, J., et al. (2024). The GFDL variable-resolution global chemistry-climate model for research at the nexus of US climate and air quality extremes. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 16, e2023MS003984. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023MS003984
—Jiwen Fan, Editor, JAMES
