Dry deposition is the second-largest tropospheric ozone (O3) sink and occurs through stomatal and nonstomatal pathways. Current O3 uptake predictions are limited by the simplistic big-leaf schemes commonly used in chemical transport models (CTMs) to parameterize deposition. Such schemes fail to reproduce observed O3 fluxes over terrestrial ecosystems, highlighting the need for more realistic treatment of surface-atmosphere exchange in CTMs. We address this need by linking a resolved canopy model (1D Multi-Layer Canopy CHemistry and Exchange Model, MLC-CHEM) to the GEOS-Chem CTM, and use this new framework to simulate O3 fluxes over three north temperate forests. We compare results with in-situ measurements from four field studies and with standalone, observationally-constrained MLC-CHEM runs to test current knowledge of O3 deposition and its drivers. We show that GEOS-Chem overpredicts observed O3 fluxes across all four studies by up to 2×, whereas the resolved-canopy models capture observed diel profiles of O3 deposition and in-canopy concentrations to within 10%. Relative humidity and solar irradiance are strong O3 flux drivers over these forests, and uncertainties in those fields provide the largest remaining source of model deposition biases. Flux partitioning analysis shows that: 1) nonstomatal loss accounts for 60% of O3 deposition on average; 2) in-canopy chemistry makes only a small contribution to total O3 fluxes; and 3) the CTM big-leaf treatment overestimates O3-driven stomatal loss and plant phytotoxicity in these temperate forests by up to 7×. Results motivate the application of fully-online, vertically explicit canopy schemes in CTMs for improved O3 predictions.

Biosphere-atmosphere interactions in forest settings have a large impact on the budget and fate of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and ozone, as forests cover over 30% of Earth’s land surface area, where major sources and sinks of these key trace gases are located. Owing to their structure and biological activity, forests affect trace gas transport and chemistry both within and above the canopy. Factors such as turbulence, surface deposition, soil emission, and gas-phase oxidation chemistry must be considered when evaluating canopy-scale NOx and ozone fluxes. Interactions involving these processes result in canopy-scale bi-directional exchange of NOx. This might be further affected by leaf-level bi-directional NOx exchange characterized by the compensation point, the ambient NOx mixing ratio above which NOx is taken up by leaves and below which NOx is emitted by leaves. During the summer 2016 Program for Research on Oxidants: PHotochemistry, Emissions, and Transport campaign at the University of Michigan Biological Station, we conducted leaf-level gas exchange experiments on white pine (Pinus strobus), bigtooth aspen (Populus grandidentata), red maple (Acer rubrum), and red oak (Quercus rubra), all dominant tree species of the forest surrounding the campaign site. Known amounts of NO, NO2, or ozone were added to a pair of branch and blank enclosures. Measurements of these gases were made continuously in a sequence of inlet and outlet air from the branch enclosure followed by the blank enclosure. We also measured PAR, ambient and enclosure temperatures and moisture, leaf temperatures and wetness, and CO2 within the enclosure. Initial analyses show that the NOx mixing ratio differences before and after the enclosure have a small but clear correlation to the input NOx mixing ratio. Further analysis is required to examine the dependence of these differences on the micro-environment of the enclosures before conclusions can be made on the existence and magnitude of compensation points for each tree type. These results, combined with the concurrently observed NOx and ozone vertical gradients, will be further analyzed using a Multi-Layer Canopy Chemistry Exchange Model for assessing the effect of leaf-level exchange on the NOx and ozone dynamics at this forest site.