Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
whole decadal time slice and are presented only for the summer season. Changes
in ozone are depicted in
Fig. 1a:
ozone mostly decreases over Europe with the
exception of the Balkan Peninsula, Adriatic Sea and the area around Gibraltar.
Decrease of ozone can be, at least partly, explained by the decrease of solar
radiation which is shown in
Fig. 1b.
The most intense decrease is seen over
France, eastern Atlantic and the Baltic Sea, where ozone is mainly lower.
Changes in solar radiation can in turn be explained by changes in cloudiness
(Fig. 1c)
. Cloud liquid water path is used here as an index of cloudiness. A
qualitative comparison o
f Fig. 1b and c
shows that in regions where cloudiness
increases, solar radiation mostly decreases.
Temperature increases are in the range of 1-1.5 K (
Fig. 1d)
. The areas mostly
affected are south and north Europe while central Europe remains relatively
unaffected. The temperature in France and England even decreases slightly. The
spatial patterns of temperature change follow closely those of the changes in 500
mb geopotential height
(Fig. 1e)
. The later forms a low over England and the
North Sea where the minimum of temperature is also located. The geopotential
height is used as an index of atmospheric circulation and seems to be strongly
modulating the temperature fields.
Finally, Fig. 1f shows changes in biogenic emissions, which in our calculations
are temperature and radiation dependent. Biogenic emissions increase in the mid-
century decade over the Balkan Peninsula and southern Iberian Peninsula, but
decrease over the rest continental Europe. Organic compounds of biogenic origin,
the most important being isoprene, are known ozone precursors. Normally, it is
expected that change in emissions of organic compounds of biogenic origin affect
ozone production. However, sensitivity studies (not shown here) suggest that O
3
formation in our modeling system is NOx sensitive, thus such small changes of
biogenic emissions are not affecting surface ozone.
Acknowledgments
This work has been funded by the European Community's Sixth Framework
Programme as part of the project CECILIA (Central and Eastern Europe Climate Change Impact
and Vulnerability Assessment) under Contract No. 037005. This work was awarded with the 1st
EURASAP Award (European Association for the Science of Air) in the 30th
ITM NAT/SPS
International Technical Meeting on Air Quality Modeling and its Applications.
References
Climate Change 2007 - The Physical Science Basis Contribution of Working Group I to the
Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC (ISBN 978 0521 88009-1).
Jacob D.J, Winner D.A. (2009) Effect of climate change on air quality, Atmopsheric Environment,
43, p. 51-63.
Krueger, B. E. Katragkou, I. Tegoulias, P. Zanis, D. Melas, E. Coppola, S. Rauscher, P. Huszar,
T. Halenka (2008) Regional photochemical model calculations for Europe concerning ozone
levels in a changing climate, Quarterly Journal of the Hungarian Meterological Service, 112,
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