Prescribing Zonally Asymmetric Ozone Climatologies in Climate Models: Performance Compared to a Chemistry-Climate Model

Three different methods of specifying ozone in an atmosphere-only version of the HadGEM3-A global circulation model are compared to the coupled chemistry configuration of this model. These methods include a specified zonal-mean ozone climatology, a specified 3-D ozone climatology, and a calculated-asymmetry scheme in which a specified zonal-mean ozone field is adapted online to be consistent with dynamically produced zonal asymmetries. These simulations all use identical boundary conditions and, by construction, have the same climatological zonal-mean ozone, that of the coupled chemistry configuration of the model. Prescribing ozone, regardless of scheme, results in a simulation which is 3-4 times faster than the coupled chemistry-climate model (CCM). Prescribing climatological zonal asymmetries leads to a vortex which is the correct intensity but which is systematically displaced over regions with lower prescribed ozone. When zonal asymmetries in ozone are free to evolve interactively with model dynamics, the modeled wintertime stratospheric vortex shape and mean sea level pressure patterns closely resemble that produced by the full CCM in both hemispheres, in terms of statistically significant differences. Further, we separate out the two distinct pathways by which zonal ozone asymmetries influence modeled dynamics. We present this interactive-ozone zonal-asymmetry scheme as an inexpensive tool for accurately modeling the impacts of dynamically consistent ozone fields as seen in a CCM which ultimately influence mean sea level pressure and tropospheric circulation (particularly during wintertime in the Northern Hemisphere, when ozone asymmetries are generally largest), without the computational burden of simulating interactive chemistry.