Improvement of stomatal resistance and photosynthesis mechanism of Noah-MP-WDDM (v1.42) in simulation of NO2 dry deposition velocity in forests

Rapid urbanisation and economic development in China have led to a dramatic increase in nitrogen oxide (NO2) emissions, causing serious atmospheric nitrogen pollution and relatively high levels of nitrogen deposition. However, despite the importance of nitrogen deposition, dry deposition processes in forested areas are still insufficiently represented in current global and regional atmospheric chemistry models, which constrains our understanding and prediction of spatial and temporal patterns of nitrogen transport in forest ecosystems in southern China. The offline 1-D community Noah land surface model with multi-parameterisation options (Noah-MP) is coupled with the WRF-Chem dry deposition module (WDDM) and is applied to further understand and identify the key processes that affect forest canopy dry deposition. The canopy stomatal resistance mechanism and the nitrogen-limiting scheme for photosynthesis in Noah-MP-WDDM are modified to improve the simulation of reactive nitrogen oxide dry deposition velocity. This study finds that the combined improved stomatal resistance mechanism and nitrogen-limiting scheme for photosynthesis (BN-23) agree better with the observed NO2 dry deposition velocity, with the mean bias being reduced by 50.1 %. At the same time, by comparing the different mechanisms of the two processes of canopy stomatal resistance and leaf nitrogen-limiting factors, this study also finds that the diurnal changes in dry deposition velocity simulated by each regional model present four sets of distributions. This is mainly due to the different ways that each integrated mechanism handles the opening and closing of stomata at noon and the way the nitrogen-limiting factor acts.

Automated summary

Rapid urbanization and economic development in China have led to dramatic increase in nitrogen oxide emissions, causing serious atmospheric nitrogen pollution and nitrogen deposition. This study improved the simulation of reactive nitrogen oxide dry deposition velocity, with the new approach showing better agreement with observed data.