TOAST 1.0: Tropospheric ozone attribution of sources with tagging for CESM 1.2.2

Abstract

A system for source attribution of tropospheric ozone produced from both NO x and volatile organic compound (VOC) precursors is described, along with its implementation in the Community Earth System Model (CESM) version 1.2.2 using CAM4. The user can specify an arbitrary number of tag identities for each NO x or VOC species in the model, and the tagging system rewrites the model chemical mechanism and source code to incorporate tagged tracers and reactions representing these tagged species, as well as ozone produced in the stratosphere. If the user supplies emission files for the corresponding tagged tracers, the model will produce tagged ozone tracers which represent the contribution of each of the tag identities to the modelled total tropospheric ozone. Our tagged tracers preserve O x. The size of the tagged chemical mechanism scales linearly with the number of specified tag identities. Separate simulations are required for NO x and VOC tagging, which avoids the sharing of tag identities between NO x and VOC species. Results are presented and evaluated for both NO x and VOC source attribution. We show that northern hemispheric surface ozone is dominated year-round by anthropogenic emissions of NO x, but that the mix of corresponding VOC precursors changes over the course of the year; anthropogenic VOC emissions contribute significantly to surface ozone in winter-spring, while biogenic VOCs are more important in summer. The system described here can provide important diagnostic information about modelled ozone production, and could be used to construct source-receptor relationships for tropospheric ozone.