[SLS Pre-Defense] Peidong Wang

“The Role of Oceans and Hydroxyl Radicals in Shaping Ozone-Depleting Substance Emission Estimates”

Stratospheric ozone serves as Earth’s natural protective layer, shielding the surface from harmful ultraviolet radiation. The discovery of the Antarctic ozone “hole” in the late 1980s raised significant societal and scientific concerns, leading to the rapid regulation of ozone-depleting substances (ODSs) under the Montreal Protocol. While recent research focuses on illicit new productions and regulations on previously exempted feedstock emissions, the ocean’s role as a natural source and sink of ODSs is often overlooked or highly simplified in past ozone assessments. Using a hierarchy of models that couple a coarse-resolution MITgcm ocean to atmospheric box models of varying complexity, we quantify the impacts of oceanic physical uptake and potential chemical and biological degradation on ODS emission estimates. Additionally, we assess uncertainties in these estimates arising from model-data discrepancies in tropospheric hydroxyl radical (OH) trends. I will also present ongoing work that integrates depth-resolved ocean observations with high-resolution MITgcm-ECCO, which assimilates observed ocean states, to better quantify oceanic ODS uptake and assess its implications for recent discrepancies in inferred tropospheric OH trends.

Sack Lunch Seminar Series —
Informal seminar series within PAOC (Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate) that focuses on more specialized topics than the PAOC Colloquium. The presentations are either given by an invited speaker or by a member of PAOC and can focus on new research or discussion of a paper of particular interest.

Contact: sacklunch-committee@mit.edu