NSFGEO-NERC: WAVE-induced Transport of Chemically Active Species in the Mesosphere and Lower Thermosphere (WAVECHASM)

University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL

Investigators

Abstract

This is a project that is jointly funded by the National Science Foundation’s Directorate of Geosciences (NSF/GEO) and the National Environment Research Council (NERC) of the United Kingdom (UK) via the NSF/GEO-NERC Lead Agency Agreement. This Agreement allows a single joint US/UK proposal to be submitted and peer-reviewed by the Agency whose investigator has the largest proportion of the budget. Upon successful joint determination of an award, each Agency funds the proportion of the budget and the investigators associated with its own investigators and component of the work. The WAVECHASM project seeks to improve models of the atmosphere by including small scale processes from the upper atmosphere into a large scale model housed at the NSF's National Center for Atmospheric Research. This cross disciplinary project brings together the physics of the near Earth space environment and atmospheric chemistry. Wave-induced transport in the atmosphere is important to a wide range of research problems, including general circulation modelling, atmospheric chemistry modelling and thermal balance calculations. However, computational cost constraints mean that it has not so far been practical to include small-scale wave transport effects directly in global models. WAVECHASM will enhance understanding of wave transport processes and their relationships to chemistry by improving our ability to model the constituent structure of the mesosphere and lower thermosphere (MLT, 70-120 km). The objectives are to quantify constituent transport theoretically, to develop a wave-transport parameterization scheme suitable for incorporating into existing global atmospheric chemistry models, and to use the upgraded models to characterize wave-transport effects on the morphologies of key MLT constituents. The US participants are responsible for developing the wave parameterization scheme and testing its efficacy using extensive observational data collected by numerous (unfunded) project partners from around the globe. The UK participants are responsible for incorporating the parameterization scheme in the NCAR Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model and for assessing its performance against a high-resolution regionally refined version of WACCM. Both the US and UK participants with then use the upgraded models to quantify the wave- and turbulence-induced vertical fluxes of key MLT species (Na, Fe, OX, HOX, COX and NOX) and determine their relationships to wave sources in the troposphere and stratosphere. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.