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- GC41H-0756: Lightning NOx and Isoprene Emissions Drive Intermodel Differences in Climate Response of Hydroxyl Radical (OH)
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Board 0756‚ Hall EFG (Poster Hall)NOLA CC
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Glen Chua, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (First Author, Presenting Author)
Susanne Bauer, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
Kostas Tsigaridis, Columbia University
Lorenzo Polvani, Columbia University
The hydroxyl radical (OH) is known as the 'atmospheric detergent' because it removes many atmospheric pollutants including methane (CH4), a major heat-trapping gas that has contributed to global warming. Climate change is an important driver of OH, but the ways in which climate change affects OH are complex and depend on many other climate-responsive processes in the Earth system. We find that in the current generation of climate models, on average, OH tends to increase with climate change. However, there are significant differences between models arising from how these models simulate two important OH-relevant processes, namely nitrogen oxide emissions from lightning activity and emissions of reactive carbon compounds from plants.Another potentially important feature for OH, wildfire emissions, is not yet fully represented in current models but will be included in some newer ones. In the GISS ModelE2.1, OH increases with climate change, but this response is still largely determined by lightning and plant emissions. Wildfire emissions mainly drives regional OH changes but not the global mean.
Overall, our work underscores the importance of improving constraints on, and model representation of, climate-interactive Earth system processes, especially lightning and plant emissions, in order to improve our understanding of OH-climate interactions.
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