Abstract
Abstract. A known adverse side effect of stratospheric aerosol modification (SAM) is the alteration of the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO), which is caused by the stratospheric heating associated with an artificial aerosol layer. Multiple studies found the QBO to slow down or even completely vanish for point-like injections of SO2 at the Equator. The cause for this was found to be a modification of the thermal wind balance and a stronger tropical upwelling. For other injection strategies, different responses of the QBO have been observed. A theory which is able to explain those differences in a comprehensive manner has not yet been presented. This is further complicated by the fact that the simulated QBO response is highly sensitive to the used model even under identical boundary conditions. Therefore, within this study we investigate the response of the QBO to SAM for three different injection strategies (point-like injection at the Equator, point-like injection at 30∘ N and 30∘ S simultaneously, and areal injection into a 60∘ wide belt along the Equator). Our simulations confirm that the QBO response significantly depends on the injection location. Based on the thermal wind balance, we demonstrate that this dependency is explained by differences in the meridional structure of the aerosol-induced stratospheric warming, i.e., the location and meridional extension of the maximum warming. Additionally, we also tested two different injection species (SO2 and H2SO4). The QBO response is qualitatively similar for both investigated injection species. Comparing the results to corresponding results of a second model, we further demonstrate the generality of our theory as well as the importance of an interactive treatment of stratospheric ozone for the simulated QBO response.
Highlights
Stratospheric aerosol modification (SAM) by the artificial injection of sulfur dioxide (SO2) into the lower stratosphere is currently widely discussed as a potential measure against global warming for the case of unmitigated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
We performed several simulations with the general circulation model (GCM) ECHAM and CESM to comprehensively compare the response of the quasibiennial oscillation (QBO) to different stratospheric aerosol modification (SAM) setups with regard to the injection strategy, the injection rate, and the injection species
Thereby, we aimed at a deeper investigation of the reasons for structural differences in the QBO response to different SAM setups
Summary
Stratospheric aerosol modification (SAM) by the artificial injection of sulfur dioxide (SO2) into the lower stratosphere is currently widely discussed as a potential measure against global warming for the case of unmitigated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Since multiple studies found that the forcing efficiency decreases significantly with increasing injection rates of SO2 (e.g., Heckendorn et al, 2009; English et al, 2012; Niemeier and Timmreck, 2015; Vattioni et al, 2019), the direct injection of gaseous H2SO4 instead of SO2 has been suggested as a potential alternative (Pierce et al, 2010; Benduhn et al, 2016) For both models, we tested an injection into a zonal belt along the Equator ranging from 30◦ N to 30◦ S and a simultaneous point-like injection at 30◦ N and 30◦ S, and for one model we tested an equatorial point injection.
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