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Abstract. Dry deposition is a key process for surface ozone(O3) removal. Stomatal uptake is a major component of O3 drydeposition, which is parameterized differently in current land surfacemodels and chemical transport models. We developed and used a standaloneterrestrial biosphere model, driven by a unified set of prescribedmeteorology, to evaluate two widely used dry deposition modeling frameworks,Wesely (1989) and Zhang et al. (2003), with different configurations ofstomatal resistance: (1) the default multiplicative method in the Weselyscheme (W89) and Zhang et al. (2003) scheme (Z03), (2) the traditionalphotosynthesis-based Farquhar–Ball–Berry (FBB) stomatal algorithm, and (3) theMedlyn stomatal algorithm (MED) based on optimization theory. We found thatusing the FBB stomatal approach that captures ecophysiological responses toenvironmental factors, especially to water stress, can generally improve thesimulated dry deposition velocities compared with multiplicative schemes.The MED stomatal approach produces higher stomatal conductance than FBB andis likely to overestimate dry deposition velocities for major vegetationtypes, but its performance is greatly improved when spatially varying slopeparameters based on annual mean precipitation are used. Large discrepancieswere also found in stomatal responses to rising CO2 levels from 390to 550 ppm: the multiplicative stomatal method with an empirical CO2response function produces reduction (−35 %) in global stomatalconductance on average much larger than that with the photosynthesis-basedstomatal method (−14 %–19 %). Our results show the potential biases inO3 sink caused by errors in model structure especially in the Weselydry deposition scheme and the importance of using photosynthesis-basedrepresentation of stomatal resistance in dry deposition schemes under achanging climate and rising CO2 concentration.
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Development of an ecophysiology module in the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model version 12.2.0 to represent biosphere–atmosphere fluxes relevant for ozone air quality
Abstract. Ground-level ozone (O3) is a major air pollutant that adversely affects human health and ecosystem productivity. Removal of troposphericO3 by plant stomatal uptake can in turn cause damage to plant tissues with ramifications for ecosystem and crop health. In manyatmospheric and land surface models, the functionality of stomata opening is represented by a bulk stomatal conductance, which is oftensemi-empirically parameterized and highly fitted to historical observations. A lack of mechanistic linkage to ecophysiological processes such asphotosynthesis may render models inadequate to represent plant-mediated responses of atmospheric chemistry to long-term changes in CO2,climate, and short-lived air pollutant concentrations. A new ecophysiology module was thus developed to mechanistically simulate land−atmosphereexchange of important gas species in GEOS-Chem, a chemical transport model widely used in atmospheric chemistry studies. The implementation not onlyallows for dry deposition to be coupled with plant ecophysiology but also enables plant and crop productivity and functions to respond dynamically toatmospheric chemical changes. We conduct simulations to evaluate the effects of the ecophysiology module on simulated dry deposition velocity andconcentration of surface O3 against an observation-derived dataset known as SynFlux. Our estimated stomatal conductance and dry depositionvelocity of O3 are close to SynFlux with root-mean-squared errors (RMSEs) below 0.3 cm s−1 across different plant functionaltypes (PFTs), despite an overall positive bias in surface O3 concentration (by up to 16 ppbv). Representing ecophysiology wasfound to reduce the simulated biases in deposition fluxes from the prior model but worsen the positive biases in simulated O3concentrations. The increase in positive concentration biases is mostly attributable to the ecophysiology-based stomatal conductance being generallysmaller (and closer to SynFlux values) than that estimated by the prior semi-empirical formulation, calling for further improvements in non-stomataldepositional and non-depositional processes relevant for O3 simulations. The estimated global O3 deposition flux is864 Tg O3 yr−1 with GEOS-Chem, and the new module decreases this estimate by 92 Tg O3 yr−1. Estimated global grossprimary production (GPP) without O3 damage is 119 Pg C yr−1. O3-induced reduction in GPP is 4.2 Pg C yr−1(3.5 %). An elevated CO2 scenario (580 ppm) yields higher global GPP (+16.8 %) and lower global O3depositional sink (−3.3 %). Global isoprene emission simulated with a photosynthesis-based scheme is 317.9 Tg C yr−1, which is31.2 Tg C yr−1 (−8.9 %) less than that calculated using the MEGAN(Model of Emissions of Gases and Aerosols from Nature) emission algorithm. This new model development dynamicallyrepresents the two-way interactions between vegetation and air pollutants and thus provides a unique capability in evaluating vegetation-mediatedprocesses and feedbacks that can shape atmospheric chemistry and air quality, as well as pollutant impacts on vegetation health, especially for anytimescales shorter than the multidecadal timescale.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1848372
- PAR ID:
- 10432275
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Geoscientific Model Development
- Volume:
- 16
- Issue:
- 9
- ISSN:
- 1991-9603
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 2323 to 2342
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-2323-2023
