Description of EQSAM4: gas-liquid-solid partitioning model for global simulations

Abstract

Abstract. We introduce version 4 of the EQuilibrium Simplified Aerosol Model (EQSAM4), which is part of our aerosol chemistry-microphysics module (GMXe) and chemistry-climate model (EMAC). We focus on the relative humidity of deliquescence (RHD) based water uptake of atmospheric aerosols, as this is important for atmospheric chemistry and climate modeling, e.g. to calculate the aerosol optical depth (AOD). Since the main EQSAM4 applications will involve large-scale, long-term and high-resolution atmospheric chemistry-climate modeling with EMAC, computational efficiency is an important requirement. EQSAM4 parameterizes the composition and water uptake of multicomponent atmospheric aerosols by considering the gas-liquid-solid partitioning of single and mixed solutes. EQSAM4 builds on analytical, and hence CPU efficient, aerosol hygroscopic growth parameterizations to compute the aerosol liquid water content (AWC). The parameterizations are described in the companion paper (Metzger et al., 2011) and only require a compound specific coefficient νi to derive the single solute molality and the AWC for the whole range of water activity (aw). νi is pre-calculated and applied during runtime by using internal look-up tables. Here, the EQSAM4 equilibrium model is described and compared to the more explicit thermodynamic model ISORROPIA II. Both models are imbedded in EMAC/GMXe. Box model inter-comparisons, including the reference model E-AIM, and global simulations with EMAC show that gas-particle partitioning, including semi-volatiles and water, is in good agreement. A more comprehensive box model inter-comparison of EQSAM4 with EQUISOLV II is subject of the revised publication of Xu et al. (2009), i.e. Xu et al. (2011).