PNNL

Abstract

The Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Initiative (AC&C) will address the current large uncertainties in our understanding of chemistry-climate interactions for short-lived atmospheric chemical constituents (e.g. aerosols, ozone, and methane). Understanding what controls the distribution of these species, how they affect climate, and how their distributions might change with a changing climate are important for air quality and climate forecasts. AC&C will address this issue in its first phase through a series of modeling exercises designed to test models’ ability to reproduce observed changes in these species distributions, to produce a set of coordinated forecasts for their future distribution, and to understand how processes are represented in different models. Observational databases will be used to test the models and to better understand processes represented in the models. This article describes the plans for this first phase of activities and seeks participation from the research community.