Simulations of preindustrial, present-day, and 2100 conditions in the NASA GISS composition and climate model G-PUCCINI

D. T. Shindell (1, 2) , G. Faluvegi (1, 2) , N. Unger (1, 2) , E. Aguilar (1, 2) , G. A. Schmidt (1, 2) , D. M. Koch (1, 3) , S. E. Bauer (1, 2) , R. L. Miller (1, 4)

1 GISS - NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
2 CCSR - Center for Climate Systems Research [New York]
3 Dept. of Geophysics
4 Dept. of Applied Physics and Applied Math

A model of atmospheric composition and climate has been developed at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) that includes composition seamlessly from the surface to the lower mesosphere. The model is able to capture many features of the observed magnitude, distribution, and seasonal cycle of trace species. The simulation is especially realistic in the troposphere. In the stratosphere, high latitude regions show substantial biases during period when transport governs the distribution as meridional mixing is too rapid in this model version. In other regions, including the extrapolar tropopause region that dominates radiative forcing (RF) by ozone, stratospheric gases are generally well-simulated. The model's stratosphere-troposphere exchange (STE) agrees well with values inferred from observations for both the global mean flux and the ratio of Northern to Southern Hemisphere downward fluxes.

Simulations of preindustrial (PI) to present-day (PD) changes show tropospheric ozone burden increases of 11% while the stratospheric burden decreases by 18%. The resulting tropopause RF values are ?0.06 W/m² from stratospheric ozone and 0.40 W/m² from tropospheric ozone. Global mean mass-weighted OH decreases by 16% from the PI to the PD. STE of ozone also decreased substantially during this time, by 14%. Comparison of the PD with a simulation using 1979 pre-ozone hole conditions for the stratosphere shows a much larger downward flux of ozone into the troposphere in 1979, resulting in a substantially greater tropospheric ozone burden than that seen in the PD run. This implies that reduced STE due to Antarctic ozone depletion may have offset as much as 2/3 of the tropospheric ozone burden increase from PI to PD. However, the model overestimates the downward flux of ozone at high Southern latitudes, so this estimate is likely an upper limit.

In the future, the tropospheric ozone burden increases sharply in 2100 for the A1B and A2 scenarios, by 41% and 101%, respectively. The primary reason is enhanced STE, which increases by 71% and 124% in the two scenarios. Chemistry and dry deposition both change so as to reduce ozone, partially in compensation for the enhanced STE. Thus even in the high-pollution A2 scenario, and certainly in A1B, the increased ozone influx dominates the burden changes. However, STE has the greatest influence on middle and high latitudes and towards the upper troposphere, so RF and surface air quality are dominated by emissions. Net RF values due to projected ozone changes depend strongly on the scenario, with 0.1 W/m² for A1B and 0.8 W/m² for A2. Changes in oxidation capacity are also scenario dependent, with values of plus and minus seven percent in the A2 and A1B scenarios, respectively.

Domaines: Océan, Atmosphère

D. T. Shindell, G. Faluvegi, N. Unger, E. Aguilar, G. A. Schmidt, et al.. Simulations of preindustrial, present-day, and 2100 conditions in the NASA GISS composition and climate model G-PUCCINI. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions, 2006, 6 (3), pp.4795-4878. ⟨hal-00301540⟩