Atmosphere‐ocean ozone exchange: A global modeling study of biogeochemical, atmospheric, and waterside turbulence dependencies

Abstract

The significance of the removal of tropospheric ozone by the oceans, covering ∼2/3 of the Earth's surface, has only been addressed in a few studies involving water tank, aircraft, and tower flux measurements. On the basis of results from these few observations of the ozone dry deposition velocity (VdO3), atmospheric chemistry models generally apply an empirical, constant ocean uptake rate of 0.05 cm s−1. This value is substantially smaller than the atmospheric turbulent transport velocity for ozone. On the other hand, the uptake is higher than expected from the solubility of ozone in clean water alone, suggesting that there is an enhancement in oceanic ozone uptake, e.g., through a chemical destruction mechanism. We present an evaluation of a global‐scale analysis with a new mechanistic representation of atmosphere‐ocean ozone exchange. The applied atmosphere chemistry‐climate model includes not only atmospheric but also waterside turbulence and the role of waterside chemical loss processes as a function of oceanic biogeochemistry. The simulations suggest a larger role of biogeochemistry in tropical and subtropical ozone oceanic uptake with a relative small temporal variability, whereas in midlatitude and high‐latitude regions, highly variable ozone uptake rates are expected because of the stronger influence of waterside turbulence. Despite a relatively large range in the explicitly calculated ocean uptake rate, there is a surprisingly small sensitivity of simulated Marine Boundary Layer ozone concentrations compared to the sensitivity for the commonly applied constant ocean uptake approach. This small sensitivity points at compensating effects through inclusion of the process‐based ocean uptake mechanisms to consider variability in oceanic O3 deposition consistent with that in atmospheric and oceanic physical, chemical, and biological processes.