Projections of future summertime ozone over the U.S.

Pfister, Gabriele; Walters, Stacy; Lamarque, J. F.; Fast, Jerome D.; Barth, M. C.; Wong, J.; Done, James M.; Holland, Greg J.; Bruyère, Cindy L.

doi:10.1002/2013jd020932

Cited by 81 publications

(109 citation statements)

References 125 publications

(155 reference statements)

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“…There is some debate as to the magnitude of any climate penalty; for example, the study of Tai et al (2013) indicates that, in the presence of CO 2 -isoprene interaction, the projected change in isoprene emission by 2050 will be largely offset or even reverse in sign, leading to much reduced sensitivity of ozone and SOA (by > 50 %) to climate and natural vegetation. Bloomer et al (2009) estimated the magnitude of these effects from surface ozone observations over the US at about 2.2 ppb per degree Celcius and Pfister et al (2014) showed increasing summertime ozone levels under various climate scenarios. These effects have been quantified over Europe in several model studies Meleux et al, 2007;Langner et al, 2012a, b;Andersson and Engardt, 2010;Manders et al, 2012;Hedegaard et al, 2008Hedegaard et al, , 2013bKatragkou et al, 2011).…”

Section: Hemispheric Transport Of Ozone and It Precursors In The Polimentioning

confidence: 99%

Tropospheric ozone and its precursors from the urban to the global scale from air quality to short-lived climate forcer

et al. 2015

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Abstract. Ozone holds a certain fascination in atmospheric science. It is ubiquitous in the atmosphere, central to tropospheric oxidation chemistry, yet harmful to human and ecosystem health as well as being an important greenhouse gas. It is not emitted into the atmosphere but is a byproduct of the very oxidation chemistry it largely initiates. Much effort is focused on the reduction of surface levels of ozone owing to its health and vegetation impacts, but recent efforts to achieve reductions in exposure at a country scale have proved difficult to achieve owing to increases in background ozone at the zonal hemispheric scale. There is also a growing realisation that the role of ozone as a short-lived climate pollutant could be important in integrated air quality climate change mitigation. This review examines current understanding of the processes regulating tropospheric ozone at global to local scales from both measurements and models. It takes the view that knowledge across the scales is important for dealing with air quality and climate change in a synergistic manner. The review shows that there remain a number of clear challenges for ozone such as explaining surface trends, incorporating new chemical understanding, ozone-climate coupling, and a better assessment of impacts. There is a clear and present need to treat ozone across the range of scales, a transboundary issue, but with an emphasis on the hemispheric scales. New observational opportunities are offered both by satellites and small sensors that bridge the scales.

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Section: Hemispheric Transport Of Ozone and It Precursors In The Polimentioning

confidence: 99%

Tropospheric ozone and its precursors from the urban to the global scale from air quality to short-lived climate forcer

et al. 2015

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…2. The number and/or frequency of events above a fixed value that is considered extreme at present, including values that are relevant to attaining ambient air quality standards (AAQS) (e.g., Murazaki and Hess, 2006;Wu et al, 2008;Gao et al, 2013;Pfister et al, 2014;Rieder et al, 2015). 3.…”

Section: State Of Knowledgementioning

confidence: 99%

“…While evaluations applying a range of the approaches above show that global models are generally able to represent the salient features of extreme ozone episodes including extent, duration, frequency and year-to-year variability (e.g., Fiore et al, 2003;Schnell et al, 2015), there are systematic regional biases in the intensity of ozone extremes, especially for the summertime eastern U.S. (e.g., Rasmussen et al, 2012;Pfister et al, 2014;Rieder et al, 2015). As stated above, these biases are most problematic when focusing on ozone extremes defined as number or frequency above a fixed threshold or AAQS metric.…”

Section: State Of Knowledgementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Computational advances allow current-generation CCMs to perform global simulations at around 1° × 1° to 2° × 2° horizontal resolution (e.g., Lamarque et al, 2013 and references therein), with higher resolutions possible for shorter (~1 year) simulations (e.g., Lin et al, 2012aLin et al, , 2012bPfister et al, 2014;Stock et al, 2014;Zhang et al, 2014). Where high and low resolution versions of a given global model have been compared, the general picture is of reduced biases and better agreement with the probability distribution for extreme episodes, both due to changes in the effective timescales of mixing for the chemistry (see also Section 3.4), and representation of the meteorology (Wild and Prather 2006;Pfister et al, 2014;Stock et al, 2014).…”

Section: State Of Knowledgementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Where high and low resolution versions of a given global model have been compared, the general picture is of reduced biases and better agreement with the probability distribution for extreme episodes, both due to changes in the effective timescales of mixing for the chemistry (see also Section 3.4), and representation of the meteorology (Wild and Prather 2006;Pfister et al, 2014;Stock et al, 2014).…”

Section: State Of Knowledgementioning

confidence: 99%

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Tropospheric Ozone Assessment Report: Assessment of global-scale model performance for global and regional ozone distributions, variability, and trends

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The goal of the Tropospheric Ozone Assessment Report (TOAR) is to provide the research community with an up-to-date scientific assessment of tropospheric ozone, from the surface to the tropopause. While a suite of observations provides significant information on the spatial and temporal distribution of tropospheric ozone, observational gaps make it necessary to use global atmospheric chemistry models to synthesize our understanding of the processes and variables that control tropospheric ozone abundance and its variability. Models facilitate the interpretation of the observations and allow us to make projections of future tropospheric ozone and trace gas distributions for different anthropogenic or natural perturbations. This paper assesses the skill of current-generation global atmospheric chemistry models in simulating the observed present-day tropospheric ozone distribution, variability, and trends. Drawing upon the results of recent international multi-model intercomparisons and using a range of model evaluation techniques, we demonstrate that global chemistry models are broadly skillful in capturing the spatio-temporal variations of tropospheric ozone over the seasonal cycle, for extreme pollution episodes, and changes over interannual to decadal periods. However, models are consistently biased high in the northern hemisphere and biased low in the southern hemisphere, throughout the depth of the troposphere, and are unable to replicate particular metrics that define the longer term trends in tropospheric ozone as derived from some background sites. When the models compare unfavorably against observations, we discuss the potential causes of model biases and propose directions for future developments, including improved evaluations that may be able to better diagnose the root cause of the model-observation disparity. Overall, model results should be approached critically, including determining whether the model performance is acceptable for the problem being addressed, whether biases can be tolerated or corrected, whether the model is appropriately constituted, and whether there is a way to satisfactorily quantify the uncertainty.

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Projecting policy‐relevant metrics for high summertime ozone pollution events over the eastern United States due to climate and emission changes during the 21st century

et al. 2015

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Over the eastern United States (EUS), nitrogen oxides (NO x ) emission controls have led to improved air quality over the past two decades, but concerns have been raised that climate warming may offset some of these gains. Here we analyze the effect of changing emissions and climate, in isolation and combination, on EUS summertime surface ozone (O 3 ) over the recent past and the 21st century in an ensemble of simulations performed with the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory CM3 chemistry-climate model. The simulated summertime EUS O 3 is biased high but captures the structure of observed changes in regional O 3 distributions following NO x emission reductions. We introduce a statistical bias correction, which allows derivation of policy-relevant statistics by assuming a stationary mean state bias in the model, but accurate simulation of changes at each quantile of the distribution. We contrast two different 21st century scenarios: (i) representative concentration pathway (RCP) 4.5 and (ii) simulations with well-mixed greenhouse gases (WMGG) following RCP4.5 but with emissions of air pollutants and precursors held fixed at 2005 levels (RCP4.5_WMGG). We find under RCP4.5 no exceedance of maximum daily 8 hour average ozone above 75 ppb by mid-21st century, reflecting the U.S. NO x emissions reductions projected in RCP4.5, while more than half of the EUS exceeds this level by the end of the 21st century under RCP4.5_WMGG. Further, we find a simple relationship between the changes in estimated 1 year return levels and regional NO x emission changes, implying that our results can be generalized to estimate changes in the frequency of EUS pollution events under different regional NO x emission scenarios.

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Projections of future summertime ozone over the U.S.

Cited by 81 publications

References 125 publications

Tropospheric ozone and its precursors from the urban to the global scale from air quality to short-lived climate forcer

Tropospheric ozone and its precursors from the urban to the global scale from air quality to short-lived climate forcer

Tropospheric Ozone Assessment Report: Assessment of global-scale model performance for global and regional ozone distributions, variability, and trends

Projecting policy‐relevant metrics for high summertime ozone pollution events over the eastern United States due to climate and emission changes during the 21st century

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