Yana Virolainen has received a financial support from the Russian Science Foundation for 2023-2024.
Annotation
Tropospheric ozone (TO) is a greenhouse gas and a reactive and toxic pollutant detrimental to human health and ecosystem productivity. The influence of TO on climate is assessed in terms of its radiative forcing (RF), which is determined as a change in the Earth’s energy flux since 1750 due to changes in TO burden. Based on outputs of multiple models, global-average RF of TO is estimated to be +(0.40 ± 0.20) W m-2, which is approximately 10% of the total anthropogenic RF for the entire industrial period.
Tropospheric ozone is the third largest (after carbon dioxide and methane) contributor to the total tropospheric RF. The relatively large uncertainty of this estimate is due to uncertainties in the estimate of pre-industrial ozone levels and uncertainties in present-day distribution of TO.
In recent years, more attention has been paid to studies of TO distribution, some regions report of the growth of tropospheric ozone levels, some – of its decrease. The Tropospheric Ozone Assessment Report in the frame of IGAC project, focusing on the present-day distribution and trends of tropospheric ozone relevant to climate and global atmospheric chemistry model evaluation, was published in 2018. It states, among other things, that the largest TO values are observed over territory of Northern Eurasia, however, the detailed analysis of TO distribution over Russia was not included in this report. It is mainly known that RF, including tropospheric ozone’s RF is different for different regions, therefore climate warming occurs with different intensity in different latitudes. In accordance with the climate models estimates, the normalized on 1 DU radiative forcing of TO totals in average +0.05 W m-2 (for clear-sky conditions).
Thus, the RF on regional climate can be assessed using the estimates of TO trends. The current Project is aimed at studying the spatial and temporal distribution of TO over Russia, in particular, in polar and subpolar latitudes, mainly by observations of the Russian spectrometer IKFS-2 aboard the Meteor-M satellite No. 2, operating since 2014 as well as by a number of satellite and ground-based instruments and the results of numerical modelling.
As a result of the study, a unique product will be created for obtaining information on the ozone content in the troposphere using Russian satellites. Using this product, the spatio-temporal fields of the distribution of TO over Russia will be analyzed, the features of the TO distribution will be investigated, and new climatological data on TO (monthly average, annual average on grids with different spatial resolution) will be derived.
These data will be used for determination of TO anomalies over territory of Russia as well as for estimation of TO seasonal cycle, TO trends and for preliminary assessment of TO contribution to regional RF in Russia.