Evaluation of the N2O rate of change to understand the stratospheric
Brewer-Dobson Circulation in a Chemistry-Climate Model
Abstract
The Brewer-Dobson Circulation (BDC) determines the distribution of
long-lived trac- ers in the stratosphere; therefore, their changes can
be used to diagnose changes in the BDC. We evaluate decadal (2005-2018)
trends of nitrous oxide (N2O) in two versions of the Whole Atmosphere
Chemistry-Climate Model (WACCM) by comparing them with measurements from
four Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) ground-based instruments, the
Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment Fourier Transform Spectrometer
(ACE-FTS), and with a chemistry-transport model (CTM) driven by four
different reanalyses. The limited sensitivity of the FTIR instruments
can hide negative N2O trends in the mid-stratosphere because of the
large increase in the lowermost stratosphere. When applying ACE-FTS
measurement sampling on model datasets, the reanalyses from the European
Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) compare best with
ACE-FTS, but the N2O trends are consistently exaggerated. The N2O trends
obtained with WACCM disagree with those obtained from ACE-FTS, but the
new WACCM version performs better than the previous above the Southern
Hemisphere in the stratosphere. Model sensitivity tests show that the
decadal N2O trends reflect changes in the stratospheric transport. We
further investigate the N2 O Transformed Eulerian Mean (TEM) budget in
WACCM and in the CTM simulation driven by the latest ECMWF reanalysis.
The TEM analysis shows that enhanced advection affects the stratospheric
N2O trends in the Tropics. While no ideal observational dataset
currently exists, this model study of N2O trends still provides new
insights about the BDC and its changes because of the contribution from
relevant sensitivity tests and the TEM analysis.