Technical Note: Chemistry-climate model SOCOL: version 2.0 with improved transport and chemistry/microphysics schemes

Abstract

We describe version 2.0 of the chemistry-climate model (CCM) SOCOL. The new version includes fundamental changes of the transport scheme such as transporting all chemical species of the model individually and applying a family-based correction scheme for mass conservation for species of the nitrogen, chlorine and bromine groups, a revised transport scheme for ozone, furthermore more detailed halogen reaction and deposition schemes, and a new cirrus parameterisation in the tropical tropopause region. By means of these changes the model manages to overcome or considerably reduce deficiencies recently identified in SOCOL version 1.1 within the CCM Validation activity of SPARC (CCMVal). In particular, as a consequence of these changes, regional mass loss or accumulation artificially caused by the semi-Lagrangian transport scheme can be significantly reduced, leading to much more realistic distributions of the modelled chemical species, most notably of the halogens and ozone.