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INTRODUCTION

INCA (INteraction with Chemistry and Aerosols) is a chemistry and aerosol model coupled to the Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (LMD) General Circulation Model, LMDz. INCA is developed at the Laboratoire des Sciences du Cimat et de l'Environnement (LSCE) in collaboration with other laboratories within  IPSL.

LMDzINCA accounts for emissions, transport (resolved and sub-grid scale), photochemical transformations, and scavenging (dry deposition and washout) of chemical species and aerosols interactively in the GCM. Several versions of the INCA model are currently used depending on the envisaged applications with the chemistry-climate model. The standard model resolution is 96x95 (3.75° longitude x 1.9° latitude) and 144x142 (2.5° longitude x 1.3° latitude). The standard vertical resolution includes 39 sigma-p hybrid levels. The GCM also offers the possibility to zoom over specific regions, reaching horizontal resolutions of 50x50 km2 over the region of interest. The model can be run in a nudged mode, relaxing to ECMWF winds and temperature. An off-line version of the GCM has also been developed in order to minimize the required computing time for transport simulations.

LMDz-INCA constitutes the atmospheric component of the IPSL coupled atmosphere-ocean-biosphere model and is often coupled to the ORCHIDEE biosphere model in order to determine interactively the exchange of chemical species (emissions, deposition) between the atmosphere and the surface.

LMDzINCA accounts for emissions, transport (resolved and sub-grid scale), photochemical transformations, and scavenging (dry deposition and washout) of chemical species and aerosols interactively in the GCM. Several versions of the INCA model are currently used depending on the envisaged applications with the chemistry-climate model. The standard model resolution is 96x72 (3.75 x 2.5 degrees in resp. longitude and latitude) with 19 sigma-p hybrid vertical levels. The GCM also offers the possibility to zoom over specific regions, reaching horizontal resolutions of 50x50 km2. The model can be run in a nudged mode, relaxing to ECMWF winds and temperature. An off-line version of the GCM has also been developed in order to minimize the required computing time for transport simulations. This model is still under development and constitutes the atmospheric component of the IPSL coupled atmosphere-ocean-biosphere model.

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