WRF-Chem Aerosol Predictions during FIREX-AQ with GOES-16 Fire Radiative Power-based Emissions and Plumerise

Abstract:

We present the implementation of Fire Radiative Power (FRP) based wildfire emissions and plumerise in WRF-Chem and evaluation of simulated aerosol concentrations and optical properties over the Continental US (CONUS) against observations of black carbon (BC from the Single Particle Soot Photometer (SP2)), organic aerosol (OA from the High Resolution Aerosol Mass Spectrometer (HR-AMS)) and aerosol extinction coefficients and backscatter (from the Differential Absorption Lidar (DIAL) system) during the 2019 FIREX-AQ field campaign. WRF-Chem simulations over CONUS were run at an 8 km x 8 km spatial resolution driven by initial and boundary conditions from the Realtime Air Quality Modeling System (RAQMS). RAQMS is a global model with 1 x 1 spatial resolution. WRF-Chem uses the GOCART aerosol module to simulate carbonaceous aerosols (BC and OC), sulfate, dust, and sea salt. Wildfire detections and properties are from the GOES-16 satellite. The GOES-16 fire product has a pixel size of 4 km² spatial resolution and 5-minute temporal resolution over CONUS. It provides fire detection locations (latitude/longitude) and fire properties (e.g. FRP, fire size). FRP based wildfire emissions and plumerise in WRF-Chem are implemented based on the HRRR-Smoke model which uses the VIIRS fire product.