the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
What controls ozone sensitivity in the upper tropical troposphere?
Clara M. Nussbaumer
Horst Fischer
Jos Lelieveld
Andrea Pozzer
Abstract. Ozone is after water vapor, the second most important contributor to the radiative energy budget of the upper troposphere (UT). Therefore, observing and understanding the processes contributing to ozone production are important for monitoring the progression of climate change. Nitrogen oxides (NOx ≡ NO + NO2) and volatile organic compounds (VOC) are two main tropospheric precursors to ozone formation. Depending on their abundances, ozone production can be sensitive to changes in either of these two precursors. Here, we focus on processes contributing to ozone chemistry in the upper tropical troposphere between 30° S and 30° N latitude, where changes in ozone have a relatively large impact on anthropogenic radiative forcing. Based on modeled trace gas mixing ratios and meteorological parameters simulated by the EMAC atmospheric chemistry – general circulation model, we analyze a variety of commonly applied metrics including ozone production rates (P(O3)), the formaldehyde (HCHO) to NO2 ratio and the share of methyl peroxyradicals (CH3O2) forming HCHO (α(CH3O2)), for their ability to describe the chemical regime. We show that the distribution of trace gases in the tropical UT is strongly influenced by the varying locations of deep convection throughout the year, and we observe peak values for NOx and P(O3) over the continental areas of South America and Africa where lightning is frequent. We find that P(O3) and its response to NO is unsuitable for determining the dominant regime in the upper troposphere. Instead, α(CH3O2) and the HCHO / NO2 ratio in combination with ambient NO levels perform well as metrics to indicate whether NOx or VOC sensitivity is prevalent. A sensitivity study with halving, doubling and excluding lightning NOx demonstrates that lightning and its distribution in the tropics are the major determinants of the chemical regimes and ozone formation in the upper tropical troposphere.
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Clara M. Nussbaumer et al.
Status: open (until 29 Jun 2023)
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RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2023-816', Anonymous Referee #1, 25 May 2023
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This paper provides a detailed analysis of ozone chemical regimes across the tropics, with a focus on the role of short-lived VOCs. The paper is well written and the analysis is thorough and it provides new insight, but my main concern is that it is missing the big-picture by focusing too much on the details of VOCs. Methane plays a huge role in global (and tropical) ozone production, especially in remote regions dominated by lightning NOx. Methane is increasing rapidly and it is expected to increase over the next few decades, and therefore it will continue to drive ozone production across the tropics, even if NOx emissions were to remain constant. Methane cannot be ignored and this paper needs to consider the role of methane as the background driver of tropical ozone production. I provide more details below, and I touch on a few other items that need to be addressed.
Methane is a major ozone precursor especially in the remote atmosphere and it will play a major role in future ozone increases across the tropics (Young et al., 2013), yet methane is not even discussed in this paper. Methane cannot be ignored and needs to be addressed. Please consider the following:
Zhang et al. (2016) ran the CAM-Chem model for 1980-2010 and estimated an increase of the global tropospheric ozone burden of 28.12 Tg (8.9%), due to the increase of anthropogenic emissions and the partial shift of the emissions from mid-latitudes towards the equator. The increase of methane (15% over 30 years) accounted for one quarter of the ozone burden increase. The increase of methane has continued to the present, with rapid increases over the past 5-10 years (https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends_ch4/). Under a future scenario of high anthropogenic emissions and continuously increasing methane concentrations (Griffiths et al., 2021), the global ozone burden is expected to increase for the remainder of the 21st century (see the ssp370 scenario in Figure 6.4 of Szopa et al., 2021), with increases of approximately 10% from 2014 to 2050.
In terms of ozone production from lightning, methane is a key precursor, first explored above the tropical South Atlantic by Moxim and Levy, 2000. They found that the upper tropospheric ozone maximum above this region was dominated by ozone production from lightning NOx in conjunction with CO/CH4 chemistry. They suggested an ozone maximum would have existed in this region in preindustrial times. Similarly, Cooper et al. (2006) calculated that 69–84% (11–13 ppbv) of the observed upper-tropospheric ozone enhancement above North America during summer 2004 was due to in situ ozone production from lightning NOx and background mixing ratios of CO and CH4. In situ observations from the NASA DC8 showed very low values of reactive hydrocarbons in the UT, indicating a limited impact from fresh surface emissions. Basically, given plenty of lightning NOx, background methane concenrations and sunny conditions in the tropics, short-lived VOCs aren't required to produce large amounts of ozone.
The current authors conducted sensitivity tests to understand the impact of lightning NOx, and it would be very informative if they can estimate future changes in ozone with increasing methane. Given that methane has increased almost continuously since the 1980s, and given the high likelihood that it will continue to increase, testing the sensitivity of the model to increased methane should be a priority.
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“…model run excluding aircraft NOx does not show significant differences compared to the baseline scenario”. This result contradicts the recent findings of Wang et al. (2022) who concluded that increasing aircraft emissions are playing a major role in increasing the global tropospheric ozone burden. Please address this discrepancy.
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“In the upper troposphere (UT), ozone is the second most important greenhouse gas after water vapor and changes in ozone exert (and will continue to exert) a particularly large impact on the earth’s radiative forcing – especially in the tropopause region and the tropical UT (Lacis et al., 1990; Mohnen et al., 1993; Wuebbles, 1995; Lelieveld and van Dorland, 1995; van Dorland et al., 1997; Staehelin et al., 2001; Iglesias-Suarez et al., 2018).”
On the global scale, ozone is the third most important greenhouse gas after CO2 and methane (not including water vapor) and so I’m surprised by this statement that ozone has a greater impact than CO2 and methane on the radiative balance of the UT. I looked at the list of references and none of them seem to make a strong case for this claim. Perhaps this was true decades ago when CO2 and methane concentrations were much lower, but they have increased greatly since the study by Lacis et al. 1990.
The NOAA Annual Greenhouse Gas Index (https://gml.noaa.gov/aggi/aggi.html) has increased by 49% since 1990, driven by increases in methane and CO2 and corresponding to a radiative forcing increase from 2.3 W m-2 to 3.4 W m-2. The index does not include ozone, but the increase in radiative forcing due to ozone from 1990 to 2014 is only about 0.1 W m-2. Figure 1 in the supplement to Skeie et al. (2020) has the most recent update on the height/latitude distribution of ozone’s radiative forcing. Do you have any similar plots to compare it to, which would indicate if ozone has a stronger radiative effect in the tropical UT than CO2 or methane?References:
Cooper, O. R., A. Stohl, M. Trainer, A. Thompson, J. C. Witte, S. J. Oltmans, G. Morris, K. E. Pickering, J. H. Crawford, G. Chen, R. C. Cohen, T. H. Bertram, P. Wooldridge, A. Perring, W. H. Brune, J. Merrill, J. L. Moody, D. Tarasick, P. Nédélec, G. Forbes, M. J. Newchurch, F. J. Schmidlin, B. J. Johnson, S. Turquety, S. L. Baughcum, X. Ren, F. C. Fehsenfeld, J. F. Meagher, N. Spichtinger, C. C. Brown, S. A. McKeen, I. S. McDermid and T. Leblanc (2006), Large upper tropospheric ozone enhancements above mid-latitude North America during summer: In situ evidence from the IONS and MOZAIC ozone monitoring network, J. Geophys. Res., 111, D24S05, doi:10.1029/2006JD007306.
Griffiths, P. T., Murray, L. T., Zeng, G., Shin, Y. M., Abraham, N. L., Archibald, A. T., Deushi, M., Emmons, L. K., Galbally, I. E., Hassler, B., Horowitz, L. W., Keeble, J., Liu, J., Moeini, O., Naik, V., O'Connor, F. M., Oshima, N., Tarasick, D., Tilmes, S., Turnock, S. T., Wild, O., Young, P. J., and Zanis, P.: Tropospheric ozone in CMIP6 simulations, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 21, 4187–4218, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-4187-2021, 2021.
Moxim, W. J., and H. Levy II (2000), A model analysis of the tropical South Atlantic Ocean tropospheric ozone maximum: The interaction of transport and chemistry, J. Geophys. Res., 105, 17,393– 17,415
Skeie, R.B., Myhre, G., Hodnebrog, Ø., Cameron-Smith, P.J., Deushi, M., Hegglin, M.I., Horowitz, L.W., Kramer, R.J., Michou, M., Mills, M.J. and Olivié, D.J., 2020. Historical total ozone radiative forcing derived from CMIP6 simulations. Npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, 3(1), p.32.
Szopa, S., V. Naik, B. Adhikary, P. Artaxo, T. Berntsen, W.D. Collins, S. Fuzzi, L. Gallardo, A. Kiendler-Scharr, Z. Klimont, H. Liao, N. Unger, and P. Zanis, 2021: Short-Lived Climate Forcers. In Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Masson-Delmotte, V., P. Zhai, A. Pirani, S.L. Connors, C. Péan, S. Berger, N. Caud, Y. Chen, L. Goldfarb, M.I. Gomis, M. Huang, K. Leitzell, E. Lonnoy, J.B.R. Matthews, T.K. Maycock, T. Waterfield, O. Yelekçi, R. Yu, and B. Zhou (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, pp. 817–922, doi:10.1017/9781009157896.008
Wang, H., et al. (2022), Global tropospheric ozone trends, attributions, and radiative impacts in 1995–2017: an integrated analysis using aircraft (IAGOS) observations, ozonesonde, and multi-decadal chemical model simulations, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 22, 13753–13782, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-13753-2022
Young, P. J., Archibald, A. T., Bowman, K. W., Lamarque, J.-F., Naik, V., Stevenson, D. S., Tilmes, S., Voulgarakis, A., Wild, O., Bergmann, D., Cameron-Smith, P., Cionni, I., Collins,W. J., Dalsøren, S. B., Doherty, R. M., Eyring, V., Faluvegi, G., Horowitz, L. W., Josse, B., Lee, Y. H., MacKenzie, I. A., Nagashima, T., Plummer, D. A., Righi, M., Rumbold, S. T., Skeie, R. B., Shindell, D. T., Strode, S. A., Sudo, K., Szopa, S., and Zeng, G.: Preindustrial to end 21st century projections of tropospheric ozone from the Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Model Intercomparison Project (ACCMIP), Atmos. Chem. Phys., 13, 2063–2090, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-13-2063-2013, 2013.
Zhang, Y., et al. (2016), Tropospheric ozone change from 1980 to 2010 dominated by equatorward redistribution of emissions, Nature Geoscience, 9(12), p.875, doi: 10.1038/NGEO2827.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-816-RC1
Clara M. Nussbaumer et al.
Clara M. Nussbaumer et al.
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