Chemistry-Climate Interactions in the GISS GCM

• Main Authors: Hansen, James E., Shindell, Drew T., Price, Colin, Grewe, Volker, Rind, David, Grenfell, J. Lee
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2001
• Subjects: Environment Pollution; Arctic; Climate change
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2060/20010078049

A tropospheric chemistry module has been developed for use within the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) general circulation model (GCM) to study interactions between chemistry and climate change. The model uses a simplified chemistry scheme based on CO-NOx-CH4 chemistry, and also includes a parameterization for emissions of isoprene, the most important non-methane hydrocarbon. The model reproduces present day annual cycles and mean distributions of key trace gases fairly well, based on extensive comparisons with available observations. Examining the simulated change between present day and pre-industrial conditions, we find that the model has a similar response to that seen in other simulations. It shows a 45% increase in the global tropospheric ozone burden, within the 25% - 57% range seen in other studies. Annual average zonal mean ozone increases by more than 125% at Northern Hemisphere middle latitudes near the surface. Comparison of model runs that allow the calculated ozone to interact with the GCM's radiation and meteorology with those that do not shows only minor differences for ozone. The common usage of ozone fields that are not calculated interactively seems to be adequate to simulate both the present day and the pre-industrial ozone distributions. However, use of coupled chemistry does alter the change in tropospheric oxidation capacity, enlarging the overall decrease in OH concentrations from the pre-industrial to the present by about 10% (-5.3% global annual average in uncoupled mode, -5.9% in coupled mode). This indicates that there may be systematic biases in the simulation of the pre-industrial to present day decrease in the oxidation capacity of the troposphere (though a 10% difference is well within the total uncertainty). Global annual average radiative forcing from pre-industrial to present day ozone change is 0.32 W/sq m. The forcing seems to be increased by about 10% when the chemistry is coupled to the GCM. Forcing values greater than 0.8 W/sq m are seen over large areas of the United States, Southern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Arctic. Radiative forcing is greater than 1.5 W/sq m over parts of these areas during Northern summer Though there are local differences, the radiative forcing is overall in good agreement with the results of other modeling studies in both its magnitude and spatial distribution, demonstrating that the simplified chemistry is adequate for climate studies.