Assessment of the Impacts of Climate Change on Ozone Air-Quality in Europe

Abstract

Although consensus exists among the scientific community that climate change could affect future air-quality through its linkages to weather meteorology, the evolution of the atmospheric composition in a changing climate needs to be further investigated. The objective of this study is to investigate the potential impact of future climate change on ozone air-quality in Europe. Simulations with the global chemical transport model GEOS-CHEM driven from the GISS III general circulation model are conducted for a present (1999–2001) and the future (2049–2051) 3-year period. To isolate the effects from changes in climate and anthropogenic emissions four types of simulations are performed: (1) present day climate and emissions (2) future climate following the IPCC SRES A1B scenario and present day anthropogenic emissions of ozone precursors (3) present day climate and future emissions and (4) future climate and emissions. Results indicate that the impact of climate change on its own leads to an increase of less than 3 ppb in western and central Europe. When both climate change and future emissions are implemented in the simulations higher changes in the ozone concentrations are evident reaching 12 ppb in the South west and east Mediterranean. Moreover, the ozone photochemical sensitivity to isoprene and nitrogen oxides (NOx) is also investigated.