Overview
It has long been recognized that radiative and dynamical feedbacks from stratospheric ozone can impact the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO). In other words, the changes in stratospheric ozone caused by QBO-driven changes in temperature and circulation alter the heating rates and overall QBO structure. The ozone feedback on the QBO has been examined mainly in the context of recent historical climate (e.g., Butchart et al.; 2003, Shibata and Deushi; 2005, Shibata; 2021, Butchart et al.; 2023), but a review of this literature reveals large uncertainties in the magnitude – and even sign – of the ozone feedback on both the QBO period and amplitude. One recent study has examined how ozone feedbacks on the QBO may change during rapid climate change, modeled as an abrupt quadrupling of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations (4 x CO2) (DallaSanta et al.; 2021), but this topic remains relatively unexplored. In general, methodological differences make it difficult to pinpoint and understand the drivers of conflicting conclusions drawn from previous studies. The QUOCA working group addresses these issues by proposing a common set of chemistry climate models to assess the robustness of QBO-ozone feedbacks.
Further information
Working Group Leaders
For more information about the project, feel free to contact:
Clara Orbe, NASA-GISS, USA
Alison Ming, University of Cambridge, UK
Michael Prather, UC Irvine, USA
Gabriel Chiodo, ETH Zürich, Switzerland
Moha Diallo, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany
Qi Tang, LLNL, USA
Participating Models
List of models and points of contact:
NASA GEOS-CCM (Contact: Feng Li)
EMAC (Contacts: Tobias Kerzenmacher and Stefan Versick)
NASA GISS E2.2 (Contact: Clara Orbe)
MIROC-ES2H (Contact: Shingo Watanabe)
AGCM3-CMAM (Contact: James Anstey)
CESM2 (WACCM6) (Contacts: Gabriel Chiodo and Rolando Garcia)
UKESM1-StratTrop (Contact: James Keeble)
E3SM (Contact: Qi Tang)
If you are running a model with an internally generated QBO and interactive chemistry (including linearized ozone), and would be willing to contribute model runs, please get in touch.
Timeline
February 2024: Initial release of experimental protocol and community meeting
March 2024: Time for receipt of community feedback
April 2024: Final protocol is released
April 2024-Spring 2025: Modeling centers run experiments and upload to the QBOi JASMIN workspace
Summer-Fall 2024: Identification of working groups and associated leads
Fall 2024: Submission of experimental protocol to GMD
Fall 2024: Virtual workshop to review motivating science questions, discuss proposed analysis and assign working groups.
Summer 2025: Presentation of results at the joint QBOi-SNAPSI-QUOCA workshop (tentatively set for Cambridge, UK)
Publications
coming soon