Abstract
The discovery of causal structures behind a phenomenon under investigation has been at the heart of scientific inquiry since the beginning. Randomized control trials, the gold standard for causal analysis, may not always be feasible, such as in the domain of climate sciences. In the absence of interventional data, we are forced to depend only on observational data. This study demonstrates the application of one such causal discovery algorithm using a neural network for identifying the drivers of surface ozone variability in Antarctica. The analyses reveal the overarching influence of the stratosphere on the surface ozone variability in Antarctica, buttressed by the southern annular mode and tropospheric wave forcing in mid-latitudes. We find no significant and robust evidence for the influence of tropical teleconnection on the ground-level ozone in Antarctica. As the field of atmospheric science is now replete with a massive stock of observational data, both satellite and ground-based, this tool for automated causal structure discovery might prove to be invaluable for scientific investigation and flawless decision making.
Highlights
Ubiquitous throughout the troposphere and stratosphere, ozone plays a significant role in atmospheric radiative forcing, atmospheric chemistry, and air quality
Notwithstanding, these peaks might result from the transport of photochemically produced ozone in the planetary boundary layer (PBL) over the Antarctic plateau to other parts of Antarctica due to katabatic flow prevalent apart from the direct transport of airmass from
Causal effects of discovered drivers using Temporal Causal Discovery Framework (TCDF) have been estimated using a doubly robust estimator based on the potential outcome framework
Summary
Ubiquitous throughout the troposphere and stratosphere, ozone plays a significant role in atmospheric radiative forcing, atmospheric chemistry, and air quality. 2–4 the precise causes of the observed changes in stratospheric ozone are complicated to isolate. They remain uncertain due to the inability of existing chemistry-climate models (CCMs) to reproduce the observations. Tropospheric ozone is a prominent air pollutant and greenhouse gas despite being only 10% of the total column amount. Ground-level ozone concentration at a given location is affected by photochemical reactions, atmospheric transport, atmospheric diffusion, topography, and emission sources of the primary pollutants [such as nitrogen oxides (NOx) and non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOCs)]. Dry deposition, dissolution into the seawater, and photolysis reactions involving nitrogen oxides (NOx) are the most prominent sinks of tropospheric ozone
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