Brown, F., Folberth, G., Sitch, S. et al. (12 more authors) (2024) Performance evaluation of UKESM1 for surface ozone across the pan-tropics. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 24 (21). pp. 12537-12555. ISSN 1680-7316
Abstract
Surface ozone monitoring sites in the tropics are limited, despite the risk that surface ozone poses to human health, tropical forest and crop productivity. Atmospheric chemistry models allow us to assess ozone exposure in unmonitored locations and evaluate the potential influence of changing policies and climate on air quality, human health and ecosystem integrity. Here, we utilise in situ ozone measurements from ground-based stations in the pan-tropics to evaluate ozone from the UK Earth system model, UKESM1, with a focus on remote sites. The study includes ozone data from areas with limited previous data, notably tropical South America, central Africa and tropical northern Australia. Evaluating UKESM1 against observations beginning in 1987 onwards, we show that UKESM1 is able to capture changes in surface ozone concentration at different temporal resolutions, albeit with a systematic high bias of 18.1 nmol mol‾¹ on average. We use the diurnal ozone range (DOR) as a metric for evaluation and find that UKESM1 captures the observed DOR (mean bias of 2.7 nmol mol‾¹ and RMSE of 7.1 nmol mol‾¹) and the trend in DOR with location and season. Results from this study reveal that hourly ozone concentrations from UKESM1 require bias correction before use for impact assessments based on human and ecosystem health. Indeed, hourly surface ozone data have been crucial to this study, and we encourage other modelling groups to include hourly surface ozone output as a default.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 22 Jul 2025 08:03 |
Last Modified: | 22 Jul 2025 08:03 |
Published Version: | https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/24/12537/2024/ |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Copernicus Publications |
Identification Number: | 10.5194/acp-24-12537-2024 |
Related URLs: | |
Sustainable Development Goals: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:229050 |
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Filename: Performance evaluation of UKESM1 for surface ozone.pdf
Licence: CC-BY 4.0