Impacts of Interactive Stratospheric Chemistry on Antarctic and Southern Ocean Climate Change in the Goddard Earth Observing System Version 5 (GEOS-5)

AbstractStratospheric ozone depletion plays a major role in driving climate change in the Southern Hemisphere. To date, many climate models prescribe the stratospheric ozone layer’s evolution using monthly and zonally averaged ozone fields. However, the prescribed ozone underestimates Antarctic ozone depletion and lacks zonal asymmetries. This study investigates the impact of using interactive stratospheric chemistry instead of prescribed ozone on climate change simulations of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean. Two sets of 1960–2010 ensemble transient simulations are conducted with the coupled ocean version of the Goddard Earth Observing System Model, version 5: one with interactive stratospheric chemistry and the other with prescribed ozone derived from the same interactive simulations. The model’s climatology is evaluated using observations and reanalysis. Comparison of the 1979–2010 climate trends between these two simulations reveals that interactive chemistry has important effects on climate change no...