Research / Research Highlights

Particles in motion: tracking aerosols with precision and a touch of randomness

Submitter

Riemer, Nicole — University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
West, Matthew — University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Area of Research

Aerosol Processes

Journal Reference

Curtis J, N Riemer, and M West. 2024. "Explicit stochastic advection algorithms for the regional-scale particle-resolved atmospheric aerosol model WRF-PartMC (v1.0)." Geoscientific Model Development, 17(22), 10.5194/gmd-17-8399-2024.

Science

This figure illustrates the convergence of our method toward the finite-volume reference solution as the number of computational particles increases from 10 to 100 to 1000. It depicts the spatial distributions of aerosol number concentration across the California modeling domain. Image from journal.

Particle-resolved aerosol modeling is a powerful tool in aerosol research because it captures critical processes and properties that bulk or simplified models often miss. Our work introduces a new method for simulating aerosol transport processes for particle-resolved models, thereby enabling the use of these models on the regional scale.

Impact

Particle-resolved modeling is a highly detailed approach to simulate the evolution of the atmospheric aerosol. Embedding such a model into a 3D chemical transport model such as the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model allows us to study the interactions of aerosol processes with the transport in the atmosphere with unprecedented detail. This, in turn, is key for predicting the impact of aerosol-cloud and aerosol-radiation interactions on climate.

Summary

This study introduces a numerical method for simulating particle-based aerosol transport in atmospheric models. We detail the various numerical properties of the advection order method and demonstrate its implementation in a 3D weather prediction model (WRF) for the first time. Particle-based techniques improve the accuracy of aerosol size and composition predictions, which are key for understanding aerosol–cloud and aerosol–radiation interactions.