ACPD Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions ACPD 1680-7375 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acpd-9-9597-2009 Parameterization of vertical diffusion and the atmospheric boundary layer height determination in the EMEP model Jeričević A. 1 Kraljević L. 1 Grisogono B. 2 Fagerli H. 3 Meteorological and Hydrological Service of Croatia, Zagreb, Croatia Andrija Mohorovičić Geophysical Institute, Department of Geophysics, Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb, Croatia Norwegian Meteorological Institute, Oslo, Norway 16 04 2009 9 2 9597 9645 This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This article is available from http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/9/9597/2009/acpd-9-9597-2009.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/9/9597/2009/acpd-9-9597-2009.pdf

A new vertical diffusion scheme, called Grisogono, has been implemented in the Unified EMEP (European Monitoring and Evaluation Programme) model. It is shown based on Large Eddy Simulation (LES) that the Grisogono method performs better than the operational O'Brien's polynomial, especially in the stable conditions. In this work, the operational and proposed new parameterization for eddy diffusivity <i>K(z)</i> have been validated against observed daily surface nitrogen dioxide (NO<sub>2</sub>), sulphur dioxide (SO<sub>2</sub>) and sulphate (SO<sub>4</sub><sup>&minus;2</sup>) concentrations at different EMEP stations during year 2001. Moderate improvement in the correlation coefficient and bias for NO<sub>2</sub> and SO<sub>2</sub> and slight improvement for sulphate is found for most of the analyzed stations with the Grisogono <i>K(z)</i> scheme, which is recommended for further application due to its scientific and technical advantages. Special emphasis is given to the representation of the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) in order to capture vertical transport and dispersion of atmospheric air pollution. Two different ABL schemes are evaluated against radiosounding data in January and July 2001, and against data from the Cabauw tower, the Netherlands, in the same year. Based on validation of the ABL parameterizations, it is found that the EMEP model is able to reproduce spatial and temporal mixing height variability. Improvements are identified especially in stable conditions with the new ABL scheme based on the bulk Richardson number (<i>Ri<sub>B</sub></i>).

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