EOMF-03. Capability of NOAA's Global Aerosol Forecast Models of GEFS-Aerosols and UFS-Aerosols

Abstract
NOAA’s operational air quality predictions contribute to protection of lives and health in the US, which requires sustainable development and improvement of its air quality modeling systems. NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS) is on its way to deploy various operational prediction applications using the Unified Forecast System (UFS, https://ufscommunity.org/), a community-based coupled, comprehensive Earth modeling system. The first generation of aerosol model components developed in a collaboration between NOAA’s Global Systems Laboratory, Chemical Sciences Laboratory, Air Resources Laboratory, Environmental Modeling Center, and Center for Satellite Applications and Research (GSL, CSL, ARL, EMC, and STAR) has been operational since September 2020 as one of the ensemble members of the Global Ensemble Forecast System (GEFS), dubbed GEFS-Aerosols. The aerosol component is based on the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF-Chem) with updates to the anthropogenic emissions and FENGSHA dust schemes. Recently, the second-generation aerosol model component has been collaboratively developed for the UFS by NOAA and NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO), called UFS-Aerosols. It embeds some of the aerosol modules from NASA’s 2nd-generation Goddard Chemistry Aerosol Radiation and Transport (GOCART) model. These models’ capabilities for forecasting aerosol optical depth (AOD) and the impacts on air quality will be evaluated and compared, including the impacts of different fire emission data from Blended Global Biomass Burning Emissions Product (GBBEPx v3) using Fire Radiative Power (FRP), Quick Fire Emissions Dataset (QFED). Observations from reanalysis data, ground-based and aircraft in-situ measurements, and satellite data are used for the evaluations. Experiments are performed with the UFS-Aerosols coupled with ocean and wave components for sub-seasonal to seasonal (S2S) forecasts.