A 7-km Non-Hydrostatic Global Mesoscale Simulation with the Goddard Earth Observing System Model (GEOS-5) for Observing System Simulation Experiments

The Global Modeling and Assimilation Office at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center has used the Goddard Earth Observing System model (GEOS-5) to produce a 2-year non-hydrostatic global mesoscale simulation for the period of June 2005-2007. This 7-km GEOS-5 Nature Run (7km-G5NR) product will provide synthetic observations for observing system simulation experiments (OSSE)s at NASA and NOAA through the Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation and the NASA Center for Climate Simulation. While GEOS-5 is regularly applied in seasonal-to-decadal climate simulations, and medium range weather prediction and data assimilation, GEOS-5 is also readily adaptable for application as a global mesoscale model in pursuit of global cloud resolving applications. Recent computing advances have permitted experimentation with global atmospheric models at these scales, although production applications like the 7km-G5NR have remained limited.

By incorporating a non-hydrostatic finite-volume dynamical core with scale aware physics parameterizations, the 7km-G5NR produces organized convective systems and robust weather systems ideal for producing observations for existing and new remote sensing instruments. In addition to standard meteorological parameters, the 7km-G5NR includes 15 aerosol tracers (including dust, seasalt, sulfate, black and organic carbon), O3, CO and CO₂. The 7km-G5NR is driven by prescribed sea-surface temperatures and sea-ice, daily volcanic and biomass burning emissions, as well as high-resolution inventories of anthropogenic sources.

We will discuss the technical challenges of producing the 7km-G5NR including the nearly 5 petabytes of full resolution output at 30-minute intervals as required by the OSSE developers, and modifications to the standard GEOS-5 physics to permit convective organization at the ‘grey-zone’ resolution of 7km. Highlights of the 7km-G5NR validation will focus on the representation of clouds and organized convection including tropical cyclones, mesoscale convective complexes, and mid-latitude cyclones; and the impact of cloud radiative effects on the optical depth retrieval of aerosols and carbon species.