Effects of East Asian Short-lived Anthropogenic Air Pollutants on the Northern Hemispheric Air Quality and Climate

Short-lived anthropogenic pollutants (such as ozone and aerosols) not only degrade ambient air quality and influence human health, but also play an important role in scattering/absorbing atmospheric radiation and disturbing regional climate. Due to the rapid industrialization, anthropogenic emissions from East Asia (EA) have increased substantially during the past decades. At the same time, EA has experienced a changing climate in terms of surface temperature and precipitation. In order to understand to what extent that EA short-lived anthropogenic emissions could influence domestic and downwind air quality (e.g. surface O3 and PM2.5), and explore the potential linkage between hemispheric-scale climate perturbation and regional anthropogenic forcing, we simulate global climate and chemical compositions during 1981-2000 based on the coupled general circulation model CM3 for atmosphere (with interactive tropospheric and stratospheric chemistry), oceans, land and sea ice, recently developed at Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL/NOAA). We also conduct a parallel sensitivity simulation which is identical to the base simulation but with all anthropogenic emissions over EA turned off. The difference between the base and sensitivity simulations represents the short-term response of the Northern Hemispheric climate system and atmospheric composition to the perturbation of regional anthropogenic forcing. We find that East Asian short-lived anthropogenic emissions exert significant adverse impacts on local air quality during 1981-2000, accounting for 10-30ppbV daily-averaged O3 over Eastern China in JJA. In particular, EA anthropogenic emissions elevate the summertime daily maximum 8-hour average ozone (MDA8 O3) by 30-40ppbV over the North China Plain, where the typical background MDA8 ozone ranges 30 to 45ppbV. In addition, the surface PM2.5 concentrations peak at the same season and over the same region, with a seasonal mean of 10-30ug/m3, mostly contributed from local anthropogenic sources. In terms of long-range transport, anthropogenic pollutants from EA generally account for 2-5ppbv surface ozone from east to west mid-latitude North Pacific, but with distinct seasonal variability. During spring, EA anthropogenic emissions enhance nearly 2ppbV ozone over the west coast of California, USA, which increases the number of days when MADA8 exceeds 75ppbV by 2~5days/season in JJA. We find that the high aerosol loadings over EA significantly elevate aerosol optical depth (AOD) over Eastern China (0.2-0.4 in DJF and 0.3-0.5 in JJA), which warms up the atmosphere (15~20 Watts/m2) at the expense of cooling the surface (-30~-20 Watts/m2), potentially reducing the local surface temperature by -0.5K ~ -2K. Moreover, our model results also show that EA anthropogenic pollutants significantly depress local precipitation rate (up to 1.5 mm/day) and rain frequency (4-10 days/season), particularly over South and Southwestern China. This may partly explain the change of seasonal precipitation patterns over EA during the past decades.