Identification

Title

Effects of enhanced downwelling of NOx on Antarctic upper-stratospheric ozone in the 21st century

Abstract

Ozone is expected to fully recover from the chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) era by the end of the 21st century. Furthermore, because of anthropogenic climate change, a cooler stratosphere decelerates ozone loss reactions and is projected to lead to a super recovery of ozone. We investigate the ozone distribution over the 21st century with four different future scenarios using simulations of the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model (WACCM). At the end of the 21st century, the equatorial upper stratosphere has roughly 0.5 to 1.0 ppm more ozone in the scenario with the highest greenhouse gas emissions compared to the conservative scenario. Polar ozone levels exceed those in the pre-CFC era in scenarios that have the highest greenhouse gas emissions. This is true in the Arctic stratosphere and the Antarctic lower stratosphere. The Antarctic upper stratosphere is an exception, where different scenarios all have similar levels of ozone during winter, which do not exceed pre-CFC levels. Our results show that this is due to excess nitrogen oxides (NOx) descending faster from above in the stronger scenarios of greenhouse gas emissions. NOx in the polar thermosphere and upper mesosphere is mainly produced by energetic electron precipitation (EEP) and partly by solar UV via transport from low latitudes. Our results indicate that the thermospheric/upper mesospheric NOx will be important factor for the future Antarctic ozone evolution and could potentially prevent a super recovery of ozone in the upper stratosphere.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7q81hhq

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

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2021-07-21T00:00:00Z

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