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The global impact of human activity on tropospheric ozone
Author(s) -
Levy H.,
Kasibhatla P. S.,
Moxim W. J.,
Klonecki A. A.,
Hirsch A. I.,
Oltmans S. J.,
Chameides W. L.
Publication year - 1997
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 - 10.1029/97gl00599
Subject(s) - troposphere , atmospheric sciences , tropospheric ozone , northern hemisphere , environmental science , nox , ozone , boundary layer , ozone layer , southern hemisphere , atmospheric chemistry , climatology , planetary boundary layer , stratosphere , meteorology , geology , chemistry , combustion , geography , physics , organic chemistry , thermodynamics
Within a conceptual framework of stratospheric injection, CO‐CH 4 background tropospheric chemistry, parameterized pollution production in the continental boundary layer and surface deposition, we use an 11 level GCTM to simulate global distributions of present and pre‐industrial tropospheric O 3 . The chemistry is driven by previously simulated present and pre‐industrial NOx fields, while prescribed fields of CO, CH 4 and H 2 O are held constant. An evaluation with measurements from 12 surface sites, 21 ozonesonde sites and 1 aircraft campaign finds agreement within ±25% for 73% of the observations while identifying systematic errors in the wintertime high‐latitude Northern Hemisphere (NH), the Southern Hemisphere (SH) tropics during biomass burning, and the remote SH. We predict that human activity has increased the annual integral of tropospheric ozone by 39% with 3/4's of that increase in the free troposphere, though the boundary layer [BL] annual integral has increased by 66%. The 2 largest components of the global O 3 budget are stratospheric injection at 696 TgO 3 /yr, and loss through dry deposition, which increases from 459 TgO 3 /yr to a present level of 825 TgO 3 /yr. While tropospheric chemistry's net contribution is relatively small, changing from a pre‐industrial destruction of −236 TgO 3 /yr to a present production of +128 TgO 3 /yr, it is a balance between two much larger terms, −558 TgO 3 /yr of destruction in the background troposphere and +686 TgO 3 /yr of production in the polluted boundary layer. Human impact on O 3 predominates in the summertime extratropical NH and in the tropics during their biomass burning seasons [increases of 50%–100% or more]. Conversely, there has been little increase in most of the upper troposphere [<20%], where ozone's influence on tropospheric climate is strongest.