Assessment of changing meteorology and emissions on air quality using a regional climate model: Impact on ozone

A regional climate model is used to assess changes in atmospheric ozone for the years 2030, 2050 and 2100 relative to 2006 brought about by changes in meteorology and emissions. The simulations are evaluated against ozone measurements for 2006, exhibiting good agreement between the model-predicted measurements and the measured annual cycles. Under the RCP6 emission scenario used in these simulations, average ozone mixing ratios are set to reduce by 2.0 ppb over domains encompassing Europe and the North East Atlantic between 2006 and 2100 with the most significant decrease occurring after 2050 due to the pattern in changing emissions. Peak reductions of more than 8 ppb are observed during summer time over mainland Europe by 2100. Model output was studied for three relevant sub-domains, namely the North East Atlantic, Ireland and Europe. The relative contribution of changes in both emissions and meteorology is assessed. Over the whole domain, changing emissions are predominantly responsible for changes in surface ozone; although over the North East Atlantic domain, the changing emissions do not perturb surface ozone trends and the decrease in 2100 levels is entirely attributable to changing meteorology.