Improving WRF-Chem Meteorological Analyses and Forecasts over Aerosol-Polluted Regions by Incorporating NAAPS Aerosol Analyses

When unaccounted for in numerical weather prediction (NWP) models, heavy aerosol events can cause significant unrealized biases in forecast meteorological parameters such as surface temperature. To improve near-surface forecasting accuracies during heavy aerosol loadings, we demonstrate the feasibility of incorporating aerosol fields from a global chemical transport model as initial and boundary conditions into a higher-resolution NWP model with aerosol– meteorological coupling. This concept is tested for a major biomass burning smoke event over the northern Great Plains region of the United States that occurred during summer of 2015. Aerosol analyses from the global Navy Aerosol Analysis and Prediction System (NAAPS) are used as initial and boundary conditions for Weather Research and Forecasting Model with Chemistry (WRF-Chem) simulations. Through incorporating more realistic aerosol direct effects into the WRF-Chem simulations, errors in WRF-Chem simulated surface downward shortwave radiative fluxes and near-surface temperature are reduced when compared with surface-based observations. This study confirms the ability to decrease biases induced by the aerosol direct effect for regional NWP forecasts during high-impact aerosol episodes through the incorporation of analyses and forecasts from a global aerosol transport model.