Investigation of some numerical issues in a chemistry-transport model: Gas-phase simulations

Many numerical strategies have been specifically developed for chemistry-transport models. Since no exact solutions are available for 3-D real problems, there are only few insights to choose between alternative numerical schemes and approximations, or to estimate the performance discrepancy between two approaches. However it is possible to assess the importance of numerical approximations through the comparison of different strategies. We estimated the impact of several numerical schemes for advection, diffusion and stiff chemistry. We also addressed operator splitting with different methods and operator orders. The study is performed with a gas-phase Eulerian model from the modeling platform Polyphemus. It is applied to ozone forecasts mainly over Europe, with focus on a few key species: ozone, nitric oxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and hydroxy radical. The outcome is a ranking of the most sensitive numerical choices. It stresses the prominent impact of the advection scheme and of the splitting time step.

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