Simulation of CO₂ Concentration over East Asia Using the Regional Transport Model WRF-CO₂

Abstract

The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model is used for regional transport simulations of atmospheric carbon dioxide (referred to as WRF-CO 2 ) for the East Asia region at the horizontal resolution of 27 × 27 km. The domain extends from 18°N to 51°N in latitude and 101°E to 165°E in longitude, including the islands of Japan, South Korea, North Korea and a part of China. The simulation period is limited to the year 2002. To understand the role of surface fluxes and transport, we have simulated atmospheric CO 2 using 5 different CO 2 fluxes from ocean, fossil fuel and terrestrial biospheres at various horizontal resolutions, and at hourly to monthly time intervals. The model simulations are compared with observed time series at 9 stations, which are located under different ecological and climate

Temporal variations of atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> and CO at Ahmedabad in western India

“…The model resolutions may be another factor for discrepancy. As Ballav et al (2012) show that a regional model WRF-CO 2 is able to capture both diurnal and synoptic variations at two closely spaced stations within 25 km. Hence the regional models could be helpful for capturing these variabilities.…”

Simulation of CO 2 concentrations at Tsukuba tall tower using WRF-CO 2 tracer transport model

“…The monthly averaged gradients in CO 2 over the central USA region were tied to regional patterns in net ecosystem exchange. Ballav et al (2012) found that the daily scale variations in CO 2 at several sites in the East Asia region are governed by local environmental condition, local weather and large scale weather patterns.…”

“…The quality of forward simulations depends to a large extent on our ability to represent the heterogeneity of surface fluxes and model transport behaviour around the site (Tolk et al 2008). Recent studies using regional chemistry models have successfully relaxed the limitation in model horizontal resolution and account for the heterogeneity in the surface fluxes, and thus resolving the fine structures in CO 2 concentration variation over the Western European continents (e.g., Sarrat et al 2009;Pillai et al 2011;Vogel et al 2013), American continents (Freitas et al 2009;Corbin et al 2010;Moreira et al 2013), East Asian region (Ballav et al 2012) and Mediterranean Sea (Palmiéri et al 2015).…”

“…We are extending the study by Ballav et al (2012) to a tower site at Tsukuba, located 60 km northeast of central Tokyo, Japan, which may be categorized as a semi-urban site. To understand the orography of the area surrounding the tower, a local map is given with terrain height (figure 1).…”

“…Almost 60% of the land in Japan are national parks or reserved forests and about 10% of the whole country population resides in and around Tokyo, leading to a complex mixture of strong CO 2 emissions/sinks, in and around Tsukuba. Prompted by these challenges, we have attempted to simulate CO 2 concentrations over the East Asia region using the WRF-CO 2 model developed at Jadavpur University, India in collaboration with Research Institute of Global Change/Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (RIGC/JAMSTEC) (Ballav et al 2012). CO 2 and meteorological measurements at the site are being made by Meteorological Research Institute (MRI), Tsukuba, Japan.…”