Tracking Aerosol Convection Interaction Experiment (TRACER) Model Intercomparison Project (MIP)

Tracking Aerosol Convection Interaction Experiment (TRACER) Model Intercomparison Project (MIP)#

Background and Motivation#

The DOE ARM Tracking Aerosol Convection Interaction Experiment (TRACER) campaign took place in the Houston, TX region from 01 October 2021 through 30 September 2022, with an IOP from June-September 2022, which collected a comprehensive dataset focused on the evolution of convective clouds and their environment (including aerosol, cloud, thermodynamics, and lightning). A unique component of TRACER is that a large number of individual, isolated convective cells were tracked and measured with high spatial and temporal resolution. These comprehensive, unique observational datasets can help evaluate model and parameterization performance, identify model and parameterization deficiencies, and gain new insights to improve models. This provides the motivation for conducting an additional community model intercomparison project (MIP) based on the previous Aerosol Cloud Precipitation Climate (ACPC) Deep Convective Cloud (DCC) MIP (ACPC-MIP; van den Heever et al. 2017; Marinescu et al. 2021; Saleeby et al. 2025; van den Heever et al. 2025), which is referred to as the TRACER-MIP.

Modeling Groups#

Name / group

Institution

Email

Model / version

Microphysics

Note (any information you want to include here about aerosol and cloud microphysics treatment)

Stephen Saleeby,
Sue van den Heever

CSU

stephen.saleeby@colostate.edu,
sue.vandenheever@colostate.edu

RAMS

RAMS

Prognostic aerosol treatment, predicted supersaturation

Jiwen Fan,
Soumya Samanta

ANL

fanj@anl.gov,
ssamanta@anl.gov

WRF v4.0

FSBM1

Prognostic aerosol treatment, predicted supersaturation

Christian Barthlott,
Corinna Hoose

KIT

corinna.hoose@kit.edu,
christian.barthlott@kit.edu

ICON 2.6.6 (possibly ICON-ART)

Seifert & Beheng double-moment

Aerosols constant in space/time, saturation adjustment

John Mejia

DRI

john.mejia@dri.edu

WRF v4.5.1

Morrison Aerosol-Aware; ice and water paths

Prognostic aerosol treatment, predicted supersaturation

Jorge Gonzalez,
Jean Carlos Pena

SUNY-Albany

jgonzalez-cruz@albany.edu,
jpena4@albany.edu

Hamish Gordon

CMU

gordon@cmu.edu

Toshi Matsui,
Taka Iguchi

NASA-Goddard

toshihisa.matsui-1@nasa.gov,
takamichi.iguchi@nasa.gov

NU-WRF

NSSL Microphysics

Johannes Quaas, Alice Henkes

Leipzig Univ.

johannes.quaas@uni-leipzig.de,
alice.henkes@uni-leipzig.de

ICON-MPIM

Seifert & Beheng double-moment

Philip Stier

UK-Oxford

philip.stier@physics.ox.ac.uk

Benoit Vie

Meteo-France

benoit.vie@meteo.fr

Meso-NH

Yang Tian

UCAR-CGGD

ytian@ucar.edu

Yunyan Zhang,
Hsi-Yen Ma,
Jishi Zhang,
Peter Andrew Bogenschutz

LLNL

zhang25@llnl.gov,
ma21@llnl.gov,
zhang73@llnl.gov,
bogenschutz1@llnl.gov

DOE-SCREAM

Paul Field,
Annica Ekman

Univ. Leeds,
Stockholm Univ.

p.field@leeds.ac.uk,
annica@misu.su.se

Observational Groups#

Name / group

Institution

Email

Note (any information you want to include here about your contribution)

Gijs de Boer

Univ. Colorado, Boulder

gijs.deboer@colorado.edu

We have limited UAS data for the first case (17 June), including 18 CopterSonde and 1 RAAVEN flights. However, I’d be happy to support broader (beyond UAS) data analysis needs, as able.

Hassan Dashtian,
Michael H Young

Univ. Texas, Austin

michael.young@beg.utexas.edu,
hassan.dashtian@beg.utexas.edu

Collected soil moisture data for TRACER

Katia Lamer

BNL

klamer@bnl.gov

Spatially distributed atmospheric boundary layer dataset (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-024-03477-9)

Authors:#

Intercomparison Development#

Jiwen Fan*,#, Stephen Saleeby*, Michael Jensen #, Susan van den Heever, Pavlos Kollias, Tamanna Subba, Chongai Kuang, Bo Chen, Anita D. Rapp, Sarah D. Brooks, Maria Zawadowicz, Soumya Samanta, Mariko Oue

*TRACER-MIP co-leads
#Aerosol Cloud Precipitation Climate (ACPC) Deep Cloud co-leads

Infrastructure Development#

Max Grover