| Abstract: | Anthropogenic emission inventory for aerosols and reactive gases is crucial to the estimation of aerosol radiative forcing and climate effects. Here, the anthropogenic emission inventory for AerChemMIP, endorsed by CMIP6, is briefly introduced. The CMIP6 inventory is compared with a country-level inventory (i.e., MEIC) over China from 1986 to 2015. Discrepancies are found in the yearly trends of the two inventories, especially after 2006. The yearly trends of the aerosol burdens simulated by CESM2 using the two inventories follow their emission trends and deviate after the mid-2000s, while the simulated aerosol optical depths (AODs) show similar trends. The difference between the simulated AODs is much smaller than the difference between model and observation. Although the simulated AODs agree with the MODIS satellite retrievals for country-wide average, the good agreement is an offset between the underestimation in eastern China and the overestimation in western China. Low-biased precursor gas of SO2, overly strong convergence of the wind field, overly strong dilution and transport by summer monsoon circulation, too much wet scavenging by precipitation, and overly weak aerosol swelling due to low-biased relative humidity are suggested to be responsible for the underestimated AOD in eastern China. This indicates that the influence of the emission inventory uncertainties on simulated aerosol properties can be overwhelmed by model biases of meteorology and aerosol processes. It is necessary for climate models to perform reasonably well in the dynamical, physical, and chemical processes that would influence aerosol simulations. |
