The Aerosol Modeling Testbed: A Community Tool to Objectively Evaluate Aerosol Process Modules

Abstract The current paradigm of developing and testing new aerosol process modules is haphazard and slow. Aerosol modules are often tested for short simulation periods using limited data so that their overall performance over a wide range of meteorological conditions is not thoroughly evaluated. Although several model intercomparison studies quantify the differences among aerosol modules, the range of answers provides little insight on how to best improve aerosol predictions. Understanding the true impact of an aerosol process module is also complicated by the fact that other processes—such as emissions, meteorology, and chemistry—are often treated differently. To address this issue, the authors have developed an Aerosol Modeling Testbed (AMT) with the objective of providing a new approach to test and evaluate new aerosol process modules. The AMT consists of a more modular version of the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF) and a suite of tools to evaluate the performance of aerosol process modul...