Premium
Satellite constraint on the tropospheric ozone radiative effect
Author(s) -
Rap A.,
Richards N. A. D.,
Forster P. M.,
Monks S. A.,
Arnold S. R.,
Chipperfield M. P.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1002/2015gl064037
Subject(s) - tropospheric ozone , ozone , atmospheric sciences , environmental science , radiative forcing , longwave , troposphere , total ozone mapping spectrometer , radiative transfer , shortwave , ozone monitoring instrument , satellite , climatology , ozone layer , meteorology , aerosol , physics , geology , quantum mechanics , astronomy
Tropospheric ozone directly affects the radiative balance of the Earth through interaction with shortwave and longwave radiation. Here we use measurements of tropospheric ozone from the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer satellite instrument, together with chemical transport and radiative transfer models, to produce a first estimate of the stratospherically adjusted annual radiative effect (RE) of tropospheric ozone. We show that differences between modeled and observed ozone concentrations have little impact on the RE, indicating that our present‐day tropospheric ozone RE estimate of 1.17 ± 0.03 W m −2 is robust. The RE normalized by column ozone decreased between the preindustrial and the present‐day. Using a simulation with historical biomass burning and no anthropogenic emissions, we calculate a radiative forcing of 0.32 W m −2 for tropospheric ozone, within the current best estimate range. We propose a radiative kernel approach as an efficient and accurate tool for calculating ozone REs in simulations with similar ozone abundances.