CLaMS


CLaMS is a modular chemistry transport model system developed at Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany. CLaMS was first described by McKenna et al. and was expanded into three dimensions by Konopka et al.. CLaMS has been employed in recent European field campaigns THESEO, EUPLEX, TROCCINOX SCOUT-O3, and RECONCILE with a focus on simulating ozone depletion and water vapour transport.
Major strengths of CLaMS in comparison to other CTMs are
  1. its applicability for reverse domain filling studies
  2. its anisotropic mixing scheme
  3. its integrability with arbitrary observational data
  4. its comprehensive chemistry scheme

CLaMS gridding

Unlike other CTMs, CLaMS operates on a Lagrangian model grid : an air parcel is described by three space coordinates and a time coordinate. The time evolution path that an air parcels traces in space is called a trajectory. A specialised mixing scheme ensures that physically realistic diffusion is imposed on an ensemble of
trajectories in regions of high wind shear.
CLaMS operates on arbitrarily resolved horizontal grids. The space coordinates are latitude, longitude and potential temperature.

CLaMS hierarchy

CLaMS is composed of four modules and several preprocessors. The four modules are
  1. a trajectory module
  2. a box chemistry module
  3. a Lagrangian mixing module
  4. a Lagrangian sedimentation scheme

Trajectory module

Integration of trajectories with 4th order Runge–Kutta method, integration time step 30 minutes. Vertical displacement of trajectories is calculated from radiation budget.

Box chemistry module

Chemistry is based on the ASAD chemistry code of the University of Cambridge. More than 100 chemical reactions involving 40+ chemical
species are considered. Integration time step is 10 minutes, species
can be combined into chemical families to facilitate integration. The module includes a radiative transfer model for the determination of photolysis rates. The module also includes heterogeneous reactions on NAT, ice and liquid particle surfaces.

Lagrangian mixing

Mixing is based on grid deformation of quasi uniform air parcel
distributions. The contraction or elongation factors of the distances to neighboring air parcels are examined: if a critical elongation
is reached, new air parcels are introduced.
This way, anisotropic diffusion is simulated in a physically realistic manner.

Lagrangian sedimentation

Lagrangian sedimentation is calculated by following individual nitric
acid trihydrate particles that may grow or shrink by the uptake
or release of HNO3 from/to the gas phase. These particle parcels are
simulated independently from the Lagrangian air parcels. Their trajectories are determined using the horizontal winds and their vertical settling velocity that depends on the size of the individual particles. NAT particles are nucleated assuming a constant nucleation rate and they evaporate where temperatures grow too high. With this, a vertical redistribution of HNO3 is determined.

CLaMS data sets

A chemical transport model does not simulate the dynamics of the atmosphere. For CLaMS, the following meteorological data sets have been used
To initialize the chemical fields in CLaMS, data from a large variety of instruments have provided data.
  • on satellite,
  • on aircraft and balloons
If no observations are present, the chemical fields can be initialised from two-dimensional chemical models, chemistry-climate models,
climatologies, or from correlations between chemical species or chemical species and dynamical variables.