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Attribution of direct ozone radiative forcing to spatially resolved emissions
Author(s) -
Bowman K.,
Henze D. K.
Publication year - 2012
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 - 10.1029/2012gl053274
Subject(s) - ozone , radiative forcing , environmental science , atmospheric sciences , chemical transport model , forcing (mathematics) , radiative transfer , air quality index , climatology , emission inventory , meteorology , aerosol , physics , quantum mechanics , geology
Quantifying the dependence of ozone direct radiative forcing (DRF) on the mixture and spatial distribution of precursor emissions is a key step towards understanding the impact of air quality standards on climate. We use here a combination of satellite observations of ozone and its radiative effect in conjunction with an adjoint chemical transport model to determine the ozone DRF due to global, anthropogenic NO x , CO, and non‐methane hydrocarbons (NMHC) emissions regionally at 2° × 2.5° regions resolution. We show that 8% of the ozone DRF from the sum of all these emissions can be attributed to 15 regions, which are predominantly located in China and the United States (US). To achieve an equivalent reduction in ozone DRF, necessary emission reductions for each precursor vary intra‐continentally by a factor of 3–10 and globally by over an order of magnitude. The contribution of NO x emissions to ozone DRF relative to CO and NMHC emissions within individual regions varies globally by nearly a factor of two.