Identification

Title

Key drivers of ozone change and its radiative forcing over the 21st century

Abstract

Over the 21st century changes in both tropospheric and stratospheric ozone are likely to have important consequences for the Earth's radiative balance. In this study, we investigate the radiative forcing from future ozone changes using the Community Earth System Model (CESM1), with the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model (WACCM), and including fully coupled radiation and chemistry schemes. Using year 2100 conditions from the Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5) scenario, we quantify the individual contributions to ozone radiative forcing of (1) climate change, (2) reduced concentrations of ozone depleting substances (ODSs), and (3) methane increases. We calculate future ozone radiative forcings and their standard error (SE; associated with inter-annual variability of ozone) relative to year 2000 of (1) 33 +/- 104m Wm(-2), (2) 163 +/- 109m Wm(-2), and (3) 238 +/- 113m Wm(-2) due to climate change, ODSs, and methane, respectively. Our best estimate of net ozone forcing in this set of simulations is 430 +/- 130m Wm(-2) relative to year 2000 and 760 +/- 230m Wm(-2) relative to year 1750, with the 95% confidence interval given by +/- 30 %. We find that the overall long-term tropospheric ozone forcing from methane chemistry-climate feedbacks related to OH and methane lifetime is relatively small (46m Wm(-2)). Ozone radiative forcing associated with climate change and stratospheric ozone recovery are robust with regard to background climate conditions, even though the ozone response is sensitive to both changes in atmospheric composition and climate. Changes in stratospheric-produced ozone account for similar to 50% of the overall radiative forcing for the 2000-2100 period in this set of simulations, highlighting the key role of the stratosphere in determining future ozone radiative forcing.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d70k2cbs

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

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South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2018-05-03T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact