Evaluation and improvement study of the Planetary Boundary-Layer schemes during a high PM2.5 episode in a core city of BTH region, China

Accurate depictions of planetary boundary layer (PBL) processes are important for both meteorological and air quality simulations. This study examines the sensitivity of the model performance of the Weather Research Forecasting model coupled with Chemistry (WRF-Chem) to five different PBL schemes and further to different turbulence parameters for the simulation of a winter haze episode in Tianjin, a core city of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) region in China. To provide a direct and comprehensive evaluation of the PBL schemes, measurements from multiple instruments are employed, including both meteorological and air quality quantities from near-surface observations, vertical sounding measurements and ceilometer data. Moreover, the vertical distribution of the turbulent exchange coefficient is derived from sounding measurements and is utilized to evaluate the PBL schemes. The results suggest that the Mellor-Yamada-Janjic (MYJ) scheme is generally statistically superior to the other schemes when comparing observations. However, considerable model discrepancies still exist during certain stages of this haze episode, which are found to be predominantly due to the deficiency of MYJ in distinguishing the intensity of turbulent mixing between different pollution stages. To improve the model performance, this study further tests the impact of different closure parameters on the simulation of winter haze episode. In the MYJ scheme, the closure parameters play a key role in the turbulent mixing within the PBL and therefore in haze simulations. Sensitivity experiments with different MYJ parameters confirm this diagnosis and suggest that a larger Prandtl number (Pr), rather than the default value in the MYJ formulation, may be more applicable for haze simulations under stable atmospheric conditions. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

Accurate depiction of Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) processes is crucial for meteorological and air quality simulations. This study evaluates the sensitivity of model performance to various PBL schemes and turbulence parameters using the WRF-Chem model for simulating a winter haze episode in Tianjin, China. The results indicate that the MYJ scheme performs better overall in comparison to other schemes, but still shows deficiencies in distinguishing the intensity of turbulent mixing during different pollution stages.