Simulated Global Climate Response to Tropospheric Ozone-Induced Changes in Plant Transpiration

Abstract

Tropospheric ozone (O3) pollution is known to damage vegetation, reducing photosynthesis and stomatal conductance, resulting in modified plant transpiration to the atmosphere. We use an Earth system model to show that global transpiration response to near-present-day surface tropospheric ozone results in large-scale global perturbations to net outgoing long-wave and incoming shortwave radiation. Our results suggest that the radiative effect is dominated by a reduction in shortwave cloud forcing in polluted regions, in response to ozone-induced reduction in land-atmosphere moisture flux and atmospheric humidity. We simulate a statistically significant response of annual surface air temperature of up to ~ +1.5 K due to this ozone effect in vegetated regions subjected to ozone pollution. This mechanism is expected to further increase the net warming resulting from historic and future increases in tropospheric ozone.