On the response of the middle atmosphere to anthropogenic forcing

Anthropogenic forcing of the atmosphere by greenhouse gases (GHG) and ozone-depleting substances has provided an unintended test of the robustness of current understanding of the physics and chemistry of the middle atmosphere, that is, the stratosphere and mesosphere. We explore this topic by examining how well anthropogenic changes can be simulated by modern, comprehensive numerical models. Specifically, we discuss the simulations of trends in global mean temperature; the development of the ozone hole and its impact on the dynamics of the Southern Hemisphere, both in the stratosphere and troposphere; trends in the stratospheric Brewer-Dobson circulation; and the response of the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) to increasing burdens of CO₂ . We find that, in most of these cases, numerical simulation is able to reproduce observed changes and provide physical insights into the relevant mechanisms. Simulation of the QBO is on a less firm footing. Although many numerical models can now generate realistic QBOs, future projections of its behavior under the increasing burdens of GHG are inconsistent and even contradictory.

Success of Montreal Protocol Demonstrated by Comparing High-Quality UV Measurements with "World Avoided" Calculations from Two Chemistry-Climate Models

The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer has been hailed as the most successful environmental treaty ever ( https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/montreal-protocol-triumph-treaty ). Yet, although our main concern about ozone depletion is the subsequent increase in harmful solar UV radiation at the Earth's surface, no studies to date have demonstrated its effectiveness in that regard. Here we use long-term UV Index (UVI) data derived from high-quality UV spectroradiometer measurements to demonstrate its success in curbing increases in UV radiation. Without this landmark agreement, UVI values would have increased at mid-latitude locations by approximately 20% between the early 1990s and today and would approximately quadruple at mid-latitudes by 2100. In contrast, an analysis of UVI data from multiple clean-air sites shows that maximum daily UVI values have remained essentially constant over the last ~20 years in all seasons, and may even have decreased slightly in the southern hemisphere, especially in Antarctica, where effects of ozone depletion were larger. Reconstructions of the UVI from total ozone data show evidence of increasing UVI levels in the 1980s, but unfortunately, there are no high-quality UV measurements available prior to the early 1990s to confirm these increases with direct observations.

The salience of nonlinearities in the boreal winter response to ENSO: Arctic stratosphere and Europe

The Arctic stratospheric response to El Niño (EN) and La Niña (LN) is evaluated in a 41 member ensemble of the period 1980 to 2009 in the Goddard Earth Observing System Chemistry-Climate Model. We consider whether the responses to EN and LN are equal in magnitude and opposite in sign, whether the responses to moderate and extreme events are proportionate, and if the response depends on whether sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTs) peak in the Eastern Pacific (EP) or Central Pacific (CP). There is no indication of any nonlinearities between EN and LN, though in ~ 15% of the ensemble members the stratospheric sudden warming (SSW) frequencies for EN and LN are similar, suggesting that a similar SSW frequency for EN and LN, as has occurred over the past ~ 60 years, can occur by chance. The response to extreme EN events is not proportionate to the amplitude of the underlying SST anomalies in spring. EP EN events preferentially increase zonal wavenumber 1 and decrease zonal wavenumber 2 as compared to CP EN events, however the zonal-mean Arctic stratospheric and subpolar surface response is generally little different between EP EN and CP EN once one accounts for the relative weakness of CP events. These differences between EP and CP events and between moderate and extreme EN events only emerge if at least 25 events are composited, however, due to the small signal-to-noise ratio, and hence these differences may be of little practical benefit.

The Downward Influence of Sudden Stratospheric Warmings: Association with Tropospheric Precursors

Tropospheric features preceding sudden stratospheric warming events (SSWs) are identified using a large compendium of events obtained from a chemistry-climate model. In agreement with recent observational studies, it is found that approximately one-third of SSWs are preceded by extreme episodes of wave activity in the lower troposphere. The relationship becomes stronger in the lower stratosphere, where ~60% of SSWs are preceded by extreme wave activity at 100 hPa. Additional analysis characterizes events that do or do not appear to subsequently impact the troposphere, referred to as downward and non-downward propagating SSWs, respectively. On average, tropospheric wave activity is larger preceding downward-propagating SSWs compared to non-downward propagating events, and associated in particular with a doubly strengthened Siberian high. Of the SSWs that were preceded by extreme lower-tropospheric wave activity, ~2/3 propagated down to the troposphere, and hence the presence of extreme lower-tropospheric wave activity can only be used probabilistically to predict a slight increase or decrease at the onset, of the likelihood of tropospheric impacts to follow. However, a large number of downward and non-downward propagating SSWs must be considered (>35), before the difference becomes statistically significant. The precursors are also robust upon comparison with composites consisting of randomly selected tropospheric northern annular mode (NAM) events. The downward influence and precursors to split and displacement events are also examined. It is found that anomalous upward wave-1 fluxes precede both cases. Splits exhibit a near instantaneous, barotropic response in the stratosphere and troposphere, while displacements have a stronger long-term influence.

The salience of nonlinearities in the boreal winter response to ENSO: Arctic stratosphere and Europe

The Arctic stratospheric response to El Niño (EN) and La Niña (LN) is evaluated in a 41 member ensemble of the period 1980 to 2009 in the Goddard Earth Observing System Chemistry-Climate Model. We consider whether the responses to EN and LN are equal in magnitude and opposite in sign, whether the responses to moderate and extreme events are proportionate, and if the response depends on whether sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTs) peak in the Eastern Pacific (EP) or Central Pacific (CP). There is no indication of any nonlinearities between EN and LN, though in ~ 15% of the ensemble members the stratospheric sudden warming (SSW) frequencies for EN and LN are similar, suggesting that a similar SSW frequency for EN and LN, as has occurred over the past ~ 60 years, can occur by chance. The response to extreme EN events is not proportionate to the amplitude of the underlying SST anomalies in spring. EP EN events preferentially increase zonal wavenumber 1 and decrease zonal wavenumber 2 as compared to CP EN events, however the zonal-mean Arctic stratospheric and subpolar surface response is generally little different between EP EN and CP EN once one accounts for the relative weakness of CP events. These differences between EP and CP events and between moderate and extreme EN events only emerge if at least 25 events are composited, however, due to the small signal-to-noise ratio, and hence these differences may be of little practical benefit.

Nonlinear response of tropical lower stratospheric temperature and water vapor to ENSO

A series of simulations using the NASA Goddard Earth Observing System Chemistry-Climate Model are analyzed in order to assess interannual and sub-decadal variability in the tropical lower stratosphere over the past 35 years. The impact of El Niño-Southern Oscillation on temperature and water vapor in this region is nonlinear in boreal spring. While moderate El Niño events lead to cooling in this region, strong El Niño events lead to warming, even as the response of the large scale Brewer Dobson Circulation appears to scale nearly linearly with El Niño. This nonlinearity is shown to arise from the response in the Indo-West Pacific to El Niño: strong El Niño events lead to tropospheric warming extending into the tropical tropopause layer and up to the cold point in this region, where it allows for more water vapor to enter the stratosphere. The net effect is that both strong La Niña and strong El Niño events lead to enhanced entry water vapor and stratospheric moistening in boreal spring and early summer. These results lead to the following interpretation of the contribution of sea surface temperatures to the decline in water vapor from the late 1990s to the early 2000s: the very strong El Niño event in 1997/1998, followed by more than two consecutive years of La Niña, led to enhanced lower stratospheric water vapor. As this period ended in early 2001, entry water vapor concentrations declined. This effect accounts for approximately one-quarter of the observed drop.

Nonlinear response of tropical lower stratospheric temperature and water vapor to ENSO

A series of simulations using the NASA Goddard Earth Observing System Chemistry-Climate Model are analyzed in order to assess interannual and sub-decadal variability in the tropical lower stratosphere over the past 35 years. The impact of El Niño-Southern Oscillation on temperature and water vapor in this region is nonlinear in boreal spring. While moderate El Niño events lead to cooling in this region, strong El Niño events lead to warming, even as the response of the large scale Brewer Dobson Circulation appears to scale nearly linearly with El Niño. This nonlinearity is shown to arise from the response in the Indo-West Pacific to El Niño: strong El Niño events lead to tropospheric warming extending into the tropical tropopause layer and up to the cold point in this region, where it allows for more water vapor to enter the stratosphere. The net effect is that both strong La Niña and strong El Niño events lead to enhanced entry water vapor and stratospheric moistening in boreal spring and early summer. These results lead to the following interpretation of the contribution of sea surface temperatures to the decline in water vapor from the late 1990s to the early 2000s: the very strong El Niño event in 1997/1998, followed by more than two consecutive years of La Niña, led to enhanced lower stratospheric water vapor. As this period ended in early 2001, entry water vapor concentrations declined. This effect accounts for approximately one-quarter of the observed drop.

Chemical Mechanisms and Their Applications in the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) Earth System Model

NASA's Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) Earth System Model (ESM) is a modular, general circulation model (GCM), and data assimilation system (DAS) that is used to simulate and study the coupled dynamics, physics, chemistry, and biology of our planet. GEOS is developed by the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. It generates near-real-time analyzed data products, reanalyses, and weather and seasonal forecasts to support research targeted to understanding interactions among Earth System processes. For chemistry, our efforts are focused on ozone and its influence on the state of the atmosphere and oceans, and on trace gas data assimilation and global forecasting at mesoscale discretization. Several chemistry and aerosol modules are coupled to the GCM, which enables GEOS to address topics pertinent to NASA's Earth Science Mission. This paper describes the atmospheric chemistry components of GEOS and provides an overview of its Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF)-based software infrastructure, which promotes a rich spectrum of feedbacks that influence circulation and climate, and impact human and ecosystem health. We detail how GEOS allows model users to select chemical mechanisms and emission scenarios at run time, establish the extent to which the aerosol and chemical components communicate, and decide whether either or both influence the radiative transfer calculations. A variety of resolutions facilitates research on spatial and temporal scales relevant to problems ranging from hourly changes in air quality to trace gas trends in a changing climate. Samples of recent GEOS chemistry applications are provided.

Deriving Global OH Abundance and Atmospheric Lifetimes for Long-Lived Gases: A Search for CH3CCl3 Alternatives

An accurate estimate of global hydroxyl radical (OH) abundance is important for projections of air quality, climate, and stratospheric ozone recovery. As the atmospheric mixing ratios of methyl chloroform (CH3CCl3) (MCF), the commonly used OH reference gas, approaches zero, it is important to find alternative approaches to infer atmospheric OH abundance and variability. The lack of global bottom-up emission inventories is the primary obstacle in choosing a MCF alternative. We illustrate that global emissions of long-lived trace gases can be inferred from their observed mixing ratio differences between the Northern Hemisphere (NH) and Southern Hemisphere (SH), given realistic estimates of their NH-SH exchange time, the emission partitioning between the two hemispheres, and the NH versus SH OH abundance ratio. Using the observed long-term trend and emissions derived from the measured hemispheric gradient, the combination of HFC-32 (CH2F2), HFC-134a (CH2FCF3, HFC-152a (CH3CHF2), and HCFC-22 (CHClF2), instead of a single gas, will be useful as a MCF alternative to infer global and hemispheric OH abundance and trace gas lifetimes. The primary assumption on which this multispecies approach relies is that the OH lifetimes can be estimated by scaling the thermal reaction rates of a reference gas at 272 K on global and hemispheric scales. Thus, the derived hemispheric and global OH estimates are forced to reconcile the observed trends and gradient for all four compounds simultaneously. However, currently, observations of these gases from the surface networks do not provide more accurate OH abundance estimate than that from MCF.

Stratospheric variability contributed to and sustained the recent hiatus in Eurasian winter warming

The recent hiatus in global-mean surface temperature warming was characterized by a Eurasian winter cooling trend, and the cause(s) for this cooling is unclear. Here we show that the observed hiatus in Eurasian warming was associated with a recent trend toward weakened stratospheric polar vortices. Specifically, by calculating the change in Eurasian surface air temperature associated with a given vortex weakening, we demonstrate that the recent trend toward weakened polar vortices reduced the anticipated Eurasian warming due to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. Those model integrations whose stratospheric vortex evolution most closely matches that in reanalysis data also simulate a hiatus. While it is unclear whether the recent weakening of the midwinter stratospheric polar vortex was forced, a properly configured model can simulate substantial deviations of the polar vortex on decadal timescales and hence such hiatus events, implying that similar hiatus events may recur even as greenhouse gas concentrations rise.

The Effect of Representing Bromine from VSLS on the Simulation and Evolution of Antarctic Ozone

We use the Goddard Earth Observing System Chemistry-Climate Model (GEOSCCM), a contributor to both the 2010 and 2014 WMO Ozone Assessment Reports, to show that inclusion of 5 parts per trillion (ppt) of stratospheric bromine (Br_y) from very short-lived substances (VSLS) is responsible for about a decade delay in ozone hole recovery. These results partially explain the significantly later recovery of Antarctic ozone noted in the 2014 report, as bromine from VSLS was not included in the 2010 Assessment. We show multiple lines of evidence that simulations that account for VSLS Br_y are in better agreement with both total column BrO and the seasonal evolution of Antarctic ozone reported by the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA's Aura satellite. In addition, the near zero ozone levels observed in the deep Antarctic lower stratospheric polar vortex are only reproduced in a simulation that includes this Br_y source from VSLS.

Isolating the roles of different forcing agents in global stratospheric temperature changes using model integrations with incrementally added single forcings

Satellite instruments show a cooling of global stratospheric temperatures over the whole data record (1979-2014). This cooling is not linear, and includes two descending steps in the early 1980s and mid-1990s. The 1979-1995 period is characterized by increasing concentrations of ozone depleting substances (ODS) and by the two major volcanic eruptions of El Chichón (1982) and Mount Pinatubo (1991). The 1995-present period is characterized by decreasing ODS concentrations and by the absence of major volcanic eruptions. Greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations increase over the whole time period. In order to isolate the roles of different forcing agents in the global stratospheric temperature changes, we performed a set of AMIP-style simulations using the NASA Goddard Earth Observing System Chemistry-Climate Model (GEOSCCM). We find that in our model simulations the cooling of the stratosphere from 1979 to present is mostly driven by changes in GHG concentrations in the middle and upper stratosphere and by GHG and ODS changes in the lower stratosphere. While the cooling trend caused by increasing GHGs is roughly constant over the satellite era, changing ODS concentrations cause a significant stratospheric cooling only up to the mid-1990s, when they start to decrease because of the implementation of the Montreal Protocol. Sporadic volcanic events and the solar cycle have a distinct signature in the time series of stratospheric temperature anomalies but do not play a statistically significant role in the long-term trends from 1979 to 2014. Several factors combine to produce the step-like behavior in the stratospheric temperatures: in the lower stratosphere, the flattening starting in the mid 1990's is due to the decrease in ozone depleting substances; Mount Pinatubo and the solar cycle cause the abrupt steps through the aerosol-associated warming and the volcanically induced ozone depletion. In the middle and upper stratosphere, changes in solar irradiance are largely responsible for the step-like behavior of global temperatures anomalies, together with volcanically induced ozone depletion and water vapor increases in the post-Pinatubo years.

Impacts of Interactive Stratospheric Chemistry on Antarctic and Southern Ocean Climate Change in the Goddard Earth Observing System - Version 5 (GEOS-5)

Stratospheric ozone depletion plays a major role in driving climate change in the Southern Hemisphere. To date, many climate models prescribe the stratospheric ozone layer's evolution using monthly and zonally averaged ozone fields. However, the prescribed ozone underestimates Antarctic ozone depletion and lacks zonal asymmetries. In this study we investigate the impact of using interactive stratospheric chemistry instead of prescribed ozone on climate change simulations of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean. Two sets of 1960-2010 ensemble transient simulations are conducted with the coupled ocean version of the Goddard Earth Observing System Model version 5: one with interactive stratospheric chemistry and the other with prescribed ozone derived from the same interactive simulations. The model's climatology is evaluated using observations and reanalysis. Comparison of the 1979-2010 climate trends between these two simulations reveals that interactive chemistry has important effects on climate change not only in the Antarctic stratosphere, troposphere and surface, but also in the Southern Ocean and Antarctic sea ice. Interactive chemistry causes stronger Antarctic lower stratosphere cooling and circumpolar westerly acceleration during November-December-January. It enhances stratosphere-troposphere coupling and leads to significantly larger tropospheric and surface westerly changes. The significantly stronger surface wind-stress trends cause larger increases of the Southern Ocean Meridional Overturning Circulation, leading to year-round stronger ocean warming near the surface and enhanced Antarctic sea ice decrease.