High-Latitude GHG Transport Modeling in Support of the NASA Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE)

Abstract:

We present the atmospheric transport modeling infrastructure and environmental data products that support the science analysis of GHGs for the NASA Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE). High-resolution meteorological fields simulated by the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, and the four-dimensional (x, y, z and t) locations of atmospheric GHG observations, are input to the Stochastic Time-Inverted Lagrangian Transport (STILT) particle dispersion model. The resulting concentration footprint fields - a representation of the source-receptor relationship - can then, for example, be combined with bottom-up surface fluxes and compared to the atmospheric observations. The ongoing work for 2017-2019 builds upon the modeling infrastructure that supported the science analysis for the NASA Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment (CARVE) from 2012 to 2016.

Here we describe the recently-upgraded meteorological modeling configuration for ABoVE with a focus on demonstrating the potential value to the broader science community of the resulting transport and high-resolution meteorological fields. The triply-nested computational domain for WRF was chosen so that the innermost 3.3-km grid is centered on the ABoVE core domain. This placement enables the substantial orography present in the region to be represented by an underlying (and updated) high-resolution topographic input field and improves the fidelity of the near-surface transport fields. The model physics configuration is similar to the one selected by the Act-America campaign following their evaluation of several candidates, which will enable reasonable model performance and ensures consistency across research campaigns. Validation scores against surface and radiosonde observations are comparable to similar model configurations found in the literature.

Examples of the high-resolution meteorological and land-surface fields that are available to the scientific community for the period 2012 to 2019 will be shown. As well, the footprint fields for ABoVE are generated on a refined circumpolar 0.1-degree polar grid poleward of 30 degrees N, compared to 0.5-deg for CARVE, and their utility in constraining carbon fluxes will be highlighted.