The regional-scale Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model is being used by a DOE Earth System Modeling (ESM) project titled “Improving the Characterization of Clouds, Aerosols and the Cryosphere in Climate Models” to evaluate the performance of atmospheric process modules that treat aerosols and aerosol radiative forcing in the Arctic. We are using a regional-scale modeling framework for three reasons: (1) It is easier to produce a useful comparison to observations with a high resolution model; (2) We can compare the behavior of the CAM parameterization suite with some of the more complex and computationally expensive parameterizations used in WRF; (3) we can explore the behavior of this parameterization suite at high resolution. Climate models like the Community Atmosphere Model version 5 (CAM5) being used within the Community Earth System Model (CESM) will not likely be run at mesoscale spatial resolutions (10–20 km) until 5–10 years from now. The performance of the current suite of physics modules in CAM5 at such resolutions is not known, and current computing resources do not permit high-resolution global simulations to be performed routinely. We are taking advantage of two tools recently developed under PNNL Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) projects for this activity. …

The global and annual mean aerosol direct and indirect effects, relative to 1850 conditions, estimated from CESM simulations are 0.02 W m-2 and -0.39 W m-2, respectively, for emissions in year 2100 under the IPCC RCP8.5 scenario. The indirect effect is much smaller than that for 2000 emissions because of much smaller SO2 emissions in 2100; the direct effects are small due to compensation between warming by black carbon and cooling by sulfate.

The global and annual mean aerosol direct and indirect effects estimated from Community Earth System Model (CESM) simulations are -0.06 W m-2 and -1.39 W m-2, respectively.