Coupling global chemistry transport models to ECMWF's integrated forecast system

Abstract. The implementation and application of a newly developed coupled system combining ECMWF's integrated forecast system (IFS) with global chemical transport models (CTMs) is presented. The main objective of the coupled system is to enable the IFS to simulate key chemical species without the necessity to invert the complex source and sink processes such as chemical reactions, emission and deposition. Thus satellite observations of atmospheric composition can be assimilated into the IFS using its 4D-VAR algorithm. In the coupled system, the IFS simulates only the transport of chemical species. The coupled CTM provides to the IFS the concentration tendencies due to emission injection, deposition and chemical conversion. The CTMs maintain their own transport schemes and are fed with meteorological data at hourly resolution from the IFS. The CTM used in the coupled system can be either MOZART-3, TM5 or MOCAGE. The coupling is achieved via the special-purpose software OASIS4. The scientific integrity of the coupled system is proven by analysing the difference between stand-alone CTM simulations and the tracer fields in the coupled IFS. The IFS concentration fields match the CTM fields for about 48 h with the biggest differences occurring in the planetary boundary layer (PBL). The coupled system is a good test bed for process-oriented comparison of the coupled CTM. As an example, the vertical structure of chemical conversion and emission injection is studied for a ten day period over Central Europe for the three CTMs.