Identification

Title

"World avoided" simulations with the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model

Abstract

We use the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model, coupled to a deep ocean model, to investigate the impact of continued growth of halogenated ozone depleting substances (ODS) in the absence of the Montreal Protocol. We confirm the previously reported result that the growth of ODS leads to a global collapse of the ozone layer in mid-21st century, with column amounts falling to 100 DU or less at all latitudes. We also show that heterogeneous activation of chlorine in the lower stratosphere hastens this collapse but is not essential to produce it. The growth of ODS, which are also greenhouse gases, produces a radiative forcing of 4 W m−2by 2070, nearly equal that of the non-ODS greenhouse gases CO2, CH4, and N2O in the RCP4.5 scenario of IPCC. This leads to surface warming of over 2 K in the tropics, 6 K in the Arctic, and close to 4 K in Antarctica in 2070 compared to the beginning of the century. We explore the reversibility of these impacts following complete cessation of ODS emissions in the mid-2050s. We find that impacts are reversed on various time scales, depending on the atmospheric lifetime of the ODS that cause them. Thus ozone in the lower stratosphere in the tropics and subtropics recovers very quickly because the ODS that release chlorine and bromine there (e.g., methyl chloroform and methyl bromide) have short atmospheric lifetimes and are removed within a few years. On the other hand, ozone depletion in the polar caps and global radiative forcing depend on longer-lived ODS, such that much of these impacts persist through the end of our simulations in 2070.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d77d2vxn

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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Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2012-12-01T00:00:00Z

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