Abstract
Abstract. We investigate the climatic impact of stratospheric ozone recovery (SOR), with a focus on the surface temperature change in atmosphere–slab ocean coupled climate simulations. We find that although SOR would cause significant surface warming (global mean: 0.2 K) in a climate free of clouds and sea ice, it causes surface cooling (−0.06 K) in the real climate. The results here are especially interesting in that the stratosphere-adjusted radiative forcing is positive in both cases. Radiation diagnosis shows that the surface cooling is mainly due to a strong radiative effect resulting from significant reduction of global high clouds and, to a lesser extent, from an increase in high-latitude sea ice. Our simulation experiments suggest that clouds and sea ice are sensitive to stratospheric ozone perturbation, which constitutes a significant radiative adjustment that influences the sign and magnitude of the global surface temperature change.
Highlights
Observational records show that stratospheric ozone has declined prior to the late 1990s and started stabilizing and even slowly increasing, especially in the polar regions (WMO, 2007, 2011)
We find that the global mean surface temperature response to stratospheric ozone recovery (SOR) is 0.18 K in the No Cloud experiment and is 0.03 K in the No Sea Ice experiment, which confirms that the suppression of the warming effect of the SOR is largely due to clouds
The Standard and No Cloud No Sea Ice (NCNSI) experiments conducted here suggest that clouds and sea ice are sensitive to stratospheric ozone perturbations and their radiative effects are critical for predicting surface temperature changes
Summary
Observational records show that stratospheric ozone has declined prior to the late 1990s and started stabilizing and even slowly increasing, especially in the polar regions (WMO, 2007, 2011). It is known that ozone is a greenhouse gas, and that stratospheric ozone has a warming effect on tropospheric-surface climate, which has been demonstrated by early simulation works with radiative-convective models (Ramanathan and Dickinson, 1979; Lacis et al, 1990). Consistent with such understanding, ozone depletion generally leads to a negative radiative forcing (after accounting for stratospheric temperature adjustment) that cools the climate (Forster and Shine, 1997; Hansen et al, 2005; Conley et al, 2013; Myhre et al, 2013; Macintosh et al, 2016). We will describe the configuration and results of these experiments, dissect the simulations from a radiative budget perspective, and summarize our main findings in order
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