Abstract: Here we present the first multi-model ensemble of regional climate simulations at kilometer-scale horizontal grid spacing over a decade long period. A total of 23 simulations run with a horizontal grid spacing of $$\sim $$ ∼ 3 km, driven by ERA-Interim reanalysis, and performed by 22 European research groups are analysed. Six different regional climate models (RCMs) are represented in the ensemble. The simulations are compared against available high-resolution precipitation observations and coarse resolution ( $$\sim $$ ∼ 12 km) RCMs with parameterized convection. The model simulations and observations are compared with respect to mean precipitation, precipitation intensity and frequency, and heavy precipitation on daily and hourly timescales in different seasons. The results show that kilometer-scale models produce a more realistic representation of precipitation than the coarse resolution RCMs. The most significant improvements are found for heavy precipitation and precipitation frequency on both daily and hourly time scales in the summer season. In general, kilometer-scale models tend to produce more intense precipitation and reduced wet-hour frequency compared to coarse resolution models. On average, the multi-model mean shows a reduction of bias from $$\sim \,$$ ∼  −40% at 12 km to $$\sim \,$$ ∼  −3% at 3 km for heavy hourly precipitation in summer. Furthermore, the uncertainty ranges i.e. the variability between the models for wet hour frequency is reduced by half with the use of kilometer-scale models. Although differences between the model simulations at the kilometer-scale and observations still exist, it is evident that these simulations are superior to the coarse-resolution RCM simulations in the representing precipitation in the present-day climate, and thus offer a promising way forward for investigations of climate and climate change at local to regional scales.

Abstract: Our kilometer‐scale simulations are effectively able to capture the percentiles of extreme precipitation over sub‐hourly time scales For the computational domain considered, the scaling of subhourly extreme precipitation events is limited by the Clausius‐Clapeyron rate, similar as for hourly events Short time‐scale dynamical amplifications might not play a significant role for the scaling of extreme precipitation in the future climate

Abstract: Abstract. Despite the importance of ice-nucleating particles (INPs) for climate and precipitation, our understanding of these particles is far from complete. Here, we investigated INPs at three coastal marine sites in Canada, two at mid-latitude (Amphitrite Point and Labrador Sea) and one in the Arctic (Lancaster Sound). For Amphitrite Point, 23 sets of samples were analyzed, and for Labrador Sea and Lancaster Sound, one set of samples was analyzed for each location. At all three sites, the ice-nucleating ability on a per number basis (expressed as the fraction of aerosol particles acting as an INP) was strongly dependent on the particle size. For example, at diameters of around 0.2 µm, approximately 1 in 106 particles acted as an INP at −25 ∘C, while at diameters of around 8 µm, approximately 1 in 10 particles acted as an INP at −25 ∘C. The ice-nucleating ability on a per surface-area basis (expressed as the surface active site density, ns) was also dependent on the particle size, with larger particles being more efficient at nucleating ice. The ns values of supermicron particles at Amphitrite Point and Labrador Sea were larger than previously measured ns values of sea spray aerosols, suggesting that sea spray aerosols were not a major contributor to the supermicron INP population at these two sites. Consistent with this observation, a global model of INP concentrations under-predicted the INP concentrations when assuming only marine organics as INPs. On the other hand, assuming only K-feldspar as INPs, the same model was able to reproduce the measurements at a freezing temperature of −25 ∘C, but under-predicted INP concentrations at −15 ∘C, suggesting that the model is missing a source of INPs active at a freezing temperature of −15 ∘C.

Abstract: Abstract. Atmospheric vortex streets are a widely studied dynamical effect of isolated mountainous islands. Observational evidence comes from case studies and satellite imagery, but the climatology and annual cycle of vortex shedding are often poorly understood. Using the non-hydrostatic limited-area COSMO model driven by the ERA-Interim reanalysis, we conducted a 10-year-long simulation over a mesoscale domain covering the Madeira and Canary archipelagos at high spatial (grid spacing of 1 km) and temporal resolutions. Basic properties of vortex streets were analysed and validated through a 6 d long case study in the lee of Madeira Island. The simulation compares well with satellite and aerial observations and with existing literature on idealised simulations. Our results show a strong dependency of vortex shedding on local and synoptic-flow conditions, which are to a large extent governed by the location, shape and strength of the Azores high. As part of the case study, we developed a vortex identification algorithm. The algorithm is based on a set of criteria and enabled us to develop a climatology of vortex shedding from Madeira Island for the 10-year simulation period. The analysis shows a pronounced annual cycle with an increasing vortex-shedding rate from April to August and a sudden decrease in September. This cycle is consistent with mesoscale wind conditions and local inversion height patterns.

Abstract: Large biases in climate model simulations of cloud radiative properties over the Southern Ocean cause large errors in modeled sea surface temperatures, atmospheric circulation, and climate sensitivity. Here, we combine cloud-resolving model simulations with estimates of the concentration of ice-nucleating particles in this region to show that our simulated Southern Ocean clouds reflect far more radiation than predicted by global models, in agreement with satellite observations. Specifically, we show that the clouds that are most sensitive to the concentration of ice-nucleating particles are low-level mixed-phase clouds in the cold sectors of extratropical cyclones, which have previously been identified as a main contributor to the Southern Ocean radiation bias. The very low ice-nucleating particle concentrations that prevail over the Southern Ocean strongly suppress cloud droplet freezing, reduce precipitation, and enhance cloud reflectivity. The results help explain why a strong radiation bias occurs mainly in this remote region away from major sources of ice-nucleating particles. The results present a substantial challenge to climate models to be able to simulate realistic ice-nucleating particle concentrations and their effects under specific meteorological conditions.

Abstract: Abstract. Mineral dust particles from wind-blown soils are known to act as effective ice nucleating particles in the atmosphere and are thought to play an important role in the glaciation of mixed phase clouds. Recent work suggests that feldspars are the most efficient nucleators of the minerals commonly present in atmospheric mineral dust. However, the feldspar group of minerals is complex, encompassing a range of chemical compositions and crystal structures. To further investigate the ice-nucleating properties of the feldspar group we measured the ice nucleation activities of 15 characterized feldspar samples. We show that alkali feldspars, in particular the potassium feldspars, generally nucleate ice more efficiently than feldspars in the plagioclase series which contain significant amounts of calcium. We also find that there is variability in ice nucleating ability within these groups. While five out of six potassium-rich feldspars have a similar ice nucleating ability, one potassium rich feldspar sample and one sodium-rich feldspar sample were significantly more active. The hyper-active Na-feldspar was found to lose activity with time suspended in water with a decrease in mean freezing temperature of about 16 °C over 16 months; the mean freezing temperature of the hyper-active K-feldspar decreased by 2 °C over 16 months, whereas the "standard" K-feldspar did not change activity within the uncertainty of the experiment. These results, in combination with a review of the available literature data, are consistent with the previous findings that potassium feldspars are important components of arid or fertile soil dusts for ice nucleation. However, we also show that there is the possibility that some alkali feldspars may have enhanced ice nucleating abilities, which could have implications for prediction of ice nucleating particle concentrations in the atmosphere.

Abstract: Abstract. Ice-nucleating particles (INPs) are known to affect the amount of ice in mixed-phase clouds, thereby influencing many of their properties. The atmospheric INP concentration changes by orders of magnitude from terrestrial to marine environments, which typically contain much lower concentrations. Many modelling studies use parameterizations for heterogeneous ice nucleation and cloud ice processes that do not account for this difference because they were developed based on INP measurements made predominantly in terrestrial environments without considering the aerosol composition. Errors in the assumed INP concentration will influence the simulated amount of ice in mixed-phase clouds, leading to errors in top-of-atmosphere radiative flux and ultimately the climate sensitivity of the model. Here we develop a global model of INP concentrations relevant for mixed-phase clouds based on laboratory and field measurements of ice nucleation by K-feldspar (an ice-active component of desert dust) and marine organic aerosols (from sea spray). The simulated global distribution of INP concentrations based on these two species agrees much better with currently available ambient measurements than when INP concentrations are assumed to depend only on temperature or particle size. Underestimation of INP concentrations in some terrestrial locations may be due to the neglect of INPs from other terrestrial sources. Our model indicates that, on a monthly average basis, desert dusts dominate the contribution to the INP population over much of the world, but marine organics become increasingly important over remote oceans and they dominate over the Southern Ocean. However, day-to-day variability is important. Because desert dust aerosol tends to be sporadic, marine organic aerosols dominate the INP population on many days per month over much of the mid- and high-latitude Northern Hemisphere. This study advances our understanding of which aerosol species need to be included in order to adequately describe the global and regional distribution of INPs in models, which will guide ice nucleation researchers on where to focus future laboratory and field work.

Abstract: The “gray zone” of convection is defined as the range of horizontal grid-space resolutions at which convective processes are partially but not fully resolved explicitly by the model dynamics (typically estimated from a few kilometers to a few hundred meters). The representation of convection at these scales is challenging, as both parameterizing convective processes or relying on the model dynamics to resolve them might cause systematic model biases. Here, a regional climate model over a large European domain is used to study model biases when either using parameterizations of deep and shallow convection or representing convection explicitly. For this purpose, year-long simulations at horizontal resolutions between 50- and 2.2-km grid spacing are performed and evaluated with datasets of precipitation, surface temperature, and top-of-the-atmosphere radiation over Europe. While simulations with parameterized convection seem more favorable than using explicit convection at around 50-km resolution, at higher resolutions (grid spacing ≤ 25 km) models tend to perform similarly or even better for certain model skills when deep convection is turned off. At these finer scales, the representation of deep convection has a larger effect in model performance than changes in resolution when looking at hourly precipitation statistics and the representation of the diurnal cycle, especially over nonorographic regions. The shortwave net radiative balance at the top of the atmosphere is the variable most strongly affected by resolution changes, due to the better representation of cloud dynamical processes at higher resolutions. These results suggest that an explicit representation of convection may be beneficial in representing some aspects of climate over Europe at much coarser resolutions than previously thought, thereby reducing some of the uncertainties derived from parameterizing deep convection.

Abstract: Abstract. The second phase of the Fifth International Ice Nucleation Workshop (FIN-02) involved the gathering of a large number of researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology's Aerosol Interactions and Dynamics of the Atmosphere (AIDA) facility to promote characterization and understanding of ice nucleation measurements made by a variety of methods used worldwide. Compared to the previous workshop in 2007, participation was doubled, reflecting a vibrant research area. Experimental methods involved sampling of aerosol particles by direct processing ice nucleation measuring systems from the same volume of air in separate experiments using different ice nucleating particle (INP) types, and collections of aerosol particle samples onto filters or into liquid for sharing amongst measurement techniques that post-process these samples. In this manner, any errors introduced by differences in generation methods when samples are shared across laboratories were mitigated. Furthermore, as much as possible, aerosol particle size distribution was controlled so that the size limitations of different methods were minimized. The results presented here use data from the workshop to assess the comparability of immersion freezing measurement methods activating INPs in bulk suspensions, methods that activate INPs in condensation and/or immersion freezing modes as single particles on a substrate, continuous flow diffusion chambers (CFDCs) directly sampling and processing particles well above water saturation to maximize immersion and subsequent freezing of aerosol particles, and expansion cloud chamber simulations in which liquid cloud droplets were first activated on aerosol particles prior to freezing. The AIDA expansion chamber measurements are expected to be the closest representation to INP activation in atmospheric cloud parcels in these comparisons, due to exposing particles freely to adiabatic cooling. The different particle types used as INPs included the minerals illite NX and potassium feldspar (K-feldspar), two natural soil dusts representative of arable sandy loam (Argentina) and highly erodible sandy dryland (Tunisia) soils, respectively, and a bacterial INP (Snomax®). Considered together, the agreement among post-processed immersion freezing measurements of the numbers and fractions of particles active at different temperatures following bulk collection of particles into liquid was excellent, with possible temperature uncertainties inferred to be a key factor in determining INP uncertainties. Collection onto filters for rinsing versus directly into liquid in impingers made little difference. For methods that activated collected single particles on a substrate at a controlled humidity at or above water saturation, agreement with immersion freezing methods was good in most cases, but was biased low in a few others for reasons that have not been resolved, but could relate to water vapor competition effects. Amongst CFDC-style instruments, various factors requiring (variable) higher supersaturations to achieve equivalent immersion freezing activation dominate the uncertainty between these measurements, and for comparison with bulk immersion freezing methods. When operated above water saturation to include assessment of immersion freezing, CFDC measurements often measured at or above the upper bound of immersion freezing device measurements, but often underestimated INP concentration in comparison to an immersion freezing method that first activates all particles into liquid droplets prior to cooling (the PIMCA-PINC device, or Portable Immersion Mode Cooling chAmber–Portable Ice Nucleation Chamber), and typically slightly underestimated INP number concentrations in comparison to cloud parcel expansions in the AIDA chamber; this can be largely mitigated when it is possible to raise the relative humidity to sufficiently high values in the CFDCs, although this is not always possible operationally. Correspondence of measurements of INPs among direct sampling and post-processing systems varied depending on the INP type. Agreement was best for Snomax® particles in the temperature regime colder than −10 ∘C, where their ice nucleation activity is nearly maximized and changes very little with temperature. At temperatures warmer than −10 ∘C, Snomax® INP measurements (all via freezing of suspensions) demonstrated discrepancies consistent with previous reports of the instability of its protein aggregates that appear to make it less suitable as a calibration INP at these temperatures. For Argentinian soil dust particles, there was excellent agreement across all measurement methods; measures ranged within 1 order of magnitude for INP number concentrations, active fractions and calculated active site densities over a 25 to 30 ∘C range and 5 to 8 orders of corresponding magnitude change in number concentrations. This was also the case for all temperatures warmer than −25 ∘C in Tunisian dust experiments. In contrast, discrepancies in measurements of INP concentrations or active site densities that exceeded 2 orders of magnitude across a broad range of temperature measurements found at temperatures warmer than −25 ∘C in a previous study were replicated for illite NX. Discrepancies also exceeded 2 orders of magnitude at temperatures of −20 to −25 ∘C for potassium feldspar (K-feldspar), but these coincided with the range of temperatures at which INP concentrations increase rapidly at approximately an order of magnitude per 2 ∘C cooling for K-feldspar. These few discrepancies did not outweigh the overall positive outcomes of the workshop activity, nor the future utility of this data set or future similar efforts for resolving remaining measurement issues. Measurements of the same materials were repeatable over the time of the workshop and demonstrated strong consistency with prior studies, as reflected by agreement of data broadly with parameterizations of different specific or general (e.g., soil dust) aerosol types. The divergent measurements of the INP activity of illite NX by direct versus post-processing methods were not repeated for other particle types, and the Snomax® data demonstrated that, at least for a biological INP type, there is no expected measurement bias between bulk collection and direct immediately processed freezing methods to as warm as −10 ∘C. Since particle size ranges were limited for this workshop, it can be expected that for atmospheric populations of INPs, measurement discrepancies will appear due to the different capabilities of methods for sampling the full aerosol size distribution, or due to limitations on achieving sufficient water supersaturations to fully capture immersion freezing in direct processing instruments. Overall, this workshop presents an improved picture of present capabilities for measuring INPs than in past workshops, and provides direction toward addressing remaining measurement issues.