European ozone in a future climate : The importance of changes in dry deposition and isoprene emissions

• [1] Using a regional chemistry transport model (CTM) driven with meteorological data from a regional climate model (A2 emission scenario) we have investigated important processes for determining surface ozone concentration across Europe in a future climate. Anthropogenic ozone precursor emissions were kept constant (year 2000) to isolate the effect of climate change from 1961-1990 to 2021-2050 and 2071-2100. Biogenic isoprene emissions were calculated on-line. The results point to substantial increase in daily mean and daily maximum surface ozone over central and southern Europe. The importance of changes in natural isoprene emissions and dry deposition were investigated especially.[2] The isoprene emissions increased by a factor of about 1.8 from the current to the second future period. However, a sensitivity study using a sophisticated rescaling of isoprene emissions shows that the large increase in isoprene emission is of moderate importance in southern Europe for the strong increase in surface ozone (it can explain up to 30% of the change in central, southern and western Europe).[3] The soil-moisture dependent ozone dry deposition formulation and changes in snow cover, affecting the dry deposition, are more important processes: soil moisture dependence explains up to 80% of the change in Spain. Therefore it is vital to include soil moisture dependence in a model study of this type. Isoprene emissions are of less importance (0-30% in central and southern Europe), but not dismissible and should definitely be emitted on-line in climate-ozone projection studies.

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