Earth mass | EPFL Graph Search

An Earth mass (denoted as M_\mathrm{E} or M_\oplus, where ⊕ is the standard astronomical symbol for Earth), is a unit of mass equal to the mass of the planet Earth. The current best estimate for the mass of Earth is , with a relative uncertainty of 10−4. It is equivalent to an average density of 5,515kg/m3. Using the nearest metric prefix, the Earth mass is approximately six ronnagrams, or 6.0 Rg. The Earth mass is a standard unit of mass in astronomy that is used to indicate the masses of other planets, including rocky terrestrial planets and exoplanets. One Solar mass is close to 333,000 Earth masses. The Earth mass excludes the mass of the Moon. The mass of the Moon is about 1.2% of that of the Earth, so that the mass of the Earth+Moon system is close to 6.0456e24kg. Most of the mass is accounted for by iron and oxygen (c. 32% each), magnesium and silicon (c. 15% each), calcium, aluminium and nickel (c. 1.5% each). Precise measurement of the Earth

ISORROPIA-Lite: A Comprehensive Atmospheric Aerosol Thermodynamics Module for Earth System Models

Athanasios Nenes

Aerosol simulations especially for Earth System Models require a thermodynamics module with a good compromise between rigor and computational efficiency. We present and evaluate ISORROPIA-lite, an accelerated and simplified version of the widely used ISORROPIA-II v.2.3 aerosol thermodynamics model, expanded to include the effects of water uptake from organics and an updated interface communicating simulation diagnostics and information. ISORROPIA-lite assumes the aerosol is in metastable equilibrium (i.e., salts do not precipitate from supersaturated solutions) and treats the thermodynamics of Na+-NH4+-SO42--NO3--Cl--Ca2+-K+-Mg2+-Organics-H2O aerosol using binary activity coefficients from precalculated look-up tables. Offline comparison between ISORROPIA-II and ISORROPIA-lite (without organic water effects) for more than 330,000 atmospherically-relevant states demonstrated that i) ISORROPIA-lite provides virtually identical results with ISORROPIA-II in metastable mode and ii) differences between stable mode ISORROPIA-II and ISORROPIA-lite are less than 25% for the concentrations of the various semivolatile aerosol components and similar to the differences between stable and metastable modes of ISORROPIA-II. Using ISORROPIA-lite reduced computational cost by 35% compared to ISORROPIAII simulations in stable mode with online calculation of binary activity coefficients. Application of ISORROPIA-lite in the PMCAMx chemical transport model accelerated the 3D simulations by about 10% compared to using ISORROPIA-II in stable mode with changes in the concentrations of the major aerosol components of less than 10%. Simulations considering the effects of the organic aerosol water did not slow down ISORROPIA-lite but increased the concentrations of the inorganic semivolatile components especially at nighttime. Organic water could highly contribute to the total PM 1 water mass and increase the concentrations of fine nitrate and ammonium by as much as 1 mu g m(-3) in places where the organic aerosol and RH levels are high.

STOCKHOLM UNIV PRESS2022

ISORROPIA-Lite: A Comprehensive Atmospheric Aerosol Thermodynamics Module for Earth System Models

Athanasios Nenes

STOCKHOLM UNIV PRESS2022