Climate change impact on surface ozone based on CMIP6 Earth System Models
- 1Department of Meteorology and Climatology, School of Geology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece (zanis@auth.gr)
- 2Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter, UK
- 3University of Leeds Met Office Strategic (LUMOS) Research Group, University of Leeds, UK
- 4NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
- 5Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, LSCE-IPSL (CEA-CNRS-UVSQ), Université Paris-Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
- 6NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, USA
- 7Meteorological Research Institute, Japan Meteorological Agency, Tsukuba, Japan
- 8Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
- 9National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS), University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
- 10Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, De Bilt, the Netherlands
- 11Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA
It is presented an analysis of the effect of climate change on surface ozone (O3) discussing the related penalties and benefits around the globe from the global modeling perspective based on simulations with five CMIP6 (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6) Earth System Models. All models conducted simulation experiments considering future climate (ssp370SST) and present-day climate (ssp370pdSST) under the same future emissions scenario (SSP3-7.0). Over regions remote from pollution sources, there is a robust decline in mean surface ozone concentration varying spatially from -0.2 to -2 ppbv oC-1, with strongest decline over tropical oceanic regions, which is mainly linked to the dominating role of enhanced ozone chemical loss with higher water vapour abudances under a warmer climate. However, ozone increases over regions close to anthropogenic pollution sources or close to enhanced natural Biogenic Volatile Organic Compounds (BVOC) emission sources with a rate ranging regionally from 0.2 to 2 ppbv oC-1, implying a regional surface ozone penalty due to global warming. The individual models show this robustly for south-eastern China and India as well as for regions of Africa but there are inter-model differences in areas within Europe and the United States (US) as well as in South America. The future climate change enhances the efficiency of precursor emissions to generate surface ozone in polluted regions and thus the magnitude of this effect depends on the regional emission changes considered in this study within the SSP3_7.0 scenario. The comparison of the climate change impact effect on surface ozone versus the combined effect of climate and emission changes indicates the dominant role of precursor emission changes in projecting surface ozone concentrations under future climate change scenarios.
The authors from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki acknowledge funding from the Action titled "National Νetwork on Climate Change and its Impacts - CLIMPACT" which is implemented under the sub-project 3 of the project "Infrastructure of national research networks in the fields of Precision Medicine, Quantum Technology and Climate Change", funded by the Public Investment Program of Greece, General Secretary of Research and Technology/Ministry of Development and Investments.
How to cite: Zanis, P., Akritidis, D., Turnock, S., Naik, V., Szopa, S., Georgoulias, A. Κ., Bauer, S. E., Deushi, M., Horowitz, L. W., Keeble, J., Le Sager, P., O'Connor, F. M., Oshima, N., Tsigaridis, K., and van Noije, T.: Climate change impact on surface ozone based on CMIP6 Earth System Models, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-12257, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-12257, 2022.
