Atmospheric Physics & Chemistry

Mission

The mission of the Atmospheric Physics and Chemistry group is to develop and employ computer models -- alongside a wide range of atmospheric chemical and meteorological measurements -- to advance our understanding of the earth's past, present, and future atmospheric climate and composition.

Research Highlights

Multimodel estimates of intercontinental source-receptor relationships for ozone pollution by Fiore et al., Journal of Geophysical Research, 114, D04301, doi:10.1029/2008JD010816, 2009

Understanding the surface ozone response over a "receptor" region to emission changes over a foreign "source" region is key to evaluating the potential gains from an international approach to abate ozone pollution. A recent multi-model study under the Task Force on Hemispheric Transport of Air Pollution applied an ensemble of global and hemispheric chemical transport models to estimate the spatial average surface ozone response over east Asia (EA), Europe (EU), North America (NA), and south Asia (SA) to 20% decreases in anthropogenic emissions of ozone precursors, NOx, NMVOC, and CO (individually and combined), from each of these regions.

The figure above shows the decrease in monthly mean surface ozone over the receptor regions (one per panel) resulting from simultaneous 20% decreases in all anthropogenic ozone precursor emissions in the three foreign source regions combined (ALL; black) and individually: NA (red), EU (green), EA (dark blue), and SA (cyan). For more details, please see Fiore et al., 2009.