Schnell, Jordan L., Prather, Michael J., Josse, Beatrice, Naik, Vaishali, Horowitz, Larry W., Zeng, Guang, Shindell, Drew T., Faluvegi, Greg

Geophysical Research Letters

Published date March 21, 2016

Effect of climate change on surface ozone over North America, Europe, and East Asia

  • Evaluates the effect of future climate change on surface ozone over North America, Europe, and East Asia using present-day (2000s) and future (2100s) hourly surface ozone simulated by four global models (future climate follows RCP8.5, while methane and anthropogenic ozone precursors are fixed at year-2000 levels)
  • Finds that climate change shifts the seasonal surface ozone peak to earlier in the year and increases the amplitude of the annual cycle
  • Finds general increases in mean summertime and high-percentile ozone in polluted environments, while decreases are found in clean environments
  • Proposes climate change augments the efficiency of precursor emissions to generate surface ozone in polluted regions, thus reducing precursor export to neighboring downwind locations
  • Finds that climate change causes the largest ozone increases at high percentiles even with constant biogenic emissions
  • Finds that in most cases, air quality extreme episodes become larger and contain higher ozone levels relative to the rest of the distribution