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      Seasonal prediction of US summertime ozone using statistical analysis of large scale climate patterns

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          Significance

          This study identifies the relationship between summertime ozone air quality in the eastern United States and large-scale meteorological patterns, including sea surface temperature (SST) patterns and teleconnections, evolving over the preceding months. We show that this relationship can be used in spring to predict ozone for the following summer. Our work implies that large-scale phenomena such as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation may drive multidecadal variability in US ozone air quality. We find in particular that springtime tropical Atlantic SSTs have a significant influence on summertime meteorology and ozone air quality in the eastern United States, but the free-running, atmosphere-only climate models with prescribed SSTs fail to capture these seasonally evolving teleconnections.

          Abstract

          We develop a statistical model to predict June–July–August (JJA) daily maximum 8-h average (MDA8) ozone concentrations in the eastern United States based on large-scale climate patterns during the previous spring. We find that anomalously high JJA ozone in the East is correlated with these springtime patterns: warm tropical Atlantic and cold northeast Pacific sea surface temperatures (SSTs), as well as positive sea level pressure (SLP) anomalies over Hawaii and negative SLP anomalies over the Atlantic and North America. We then develop a linear regression model to predict JJA MDA8 ozone from 1980 to 2013, using the identified SST and SLP patterns from the previous spring. The model explains ∼45% of the variability in JJA MDA8 ozone concentrations and ∼30% variability in the number of JJA ozone episodes (>70 ppbv) when averaged over the eastern United States. This seasonal predictability results from large-scale ocean–atmosphere interactions. Warm tropical Atlantic SSTs can trigger diabatic heating in the atmosphere and influence the extratropical climate through stationary wave propagation, leading to greater subsidence, less precipitation, and higher temperatures in the East, which increases surface ozone concentrations there. Cooler SSTs in the northeast Pacific are also associated with more summertime heatwaves and high ozone in the East. On average, models participating in the Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project fail to capture the influence of this ocean–atmosphere interaction on temperatures in the eastern United States, implying that such models would have difficulty simulating the interannual variability of surface ozone in this region.

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          Most cited references28

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          Pacific and Atlantic Ocean influences on multidecadal drought frequency in the United States.

          More than half (52%) of the spatial and temporal variance in multidecadal drought frequency over the conterminous United States is attributable to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). An additional 22% of the variance in drought frequency is related to a complex spatial pattern of positive and negative trends in drought occurrence possibly related to increasing Northern Hemisphere temperatures or some other unidirectional climate trend. Recent droughts with broad impacts over the conterminous U.S. (1996, 1999-2002) were associated with North Atlantic warming (positive AMO) and northeastern and tropical Pacific cooling (negative PDO). Much of the long-term predictability of drought frequency may reside in the multidecadal behavior of the North Atlantic Ocean. Should the current positive AMO (warm North Atlantic) conditions persist into the upcoming decade, we suggest two possible drought scenarios that resemble the continental-scale patterns of the 1930s (positive PDO) and 1950s (negative PDO) drought.
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            Effect of climate change on air quality

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              Causes and impacts of the 2014 warm anomaly in the NE Pacific

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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
                Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A
                pnas
                pnas
                PNAS
                Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
                National Academy of Sciences
                0027-8424
                1091-6490
                7 March 2017
                21 February 2017
                21 February 2017
                : 114
                : 10
                : 2491-2496
                Affiliations
                [1] aJohn A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University , Cambridge, MA 02138
                Author notes
                1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: lshen@ 123456fas.harvard.edu .

                Edited by Guy Brasseur, Max Planck Institute of Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany, and accepted by Editorial Board Member A. R. Ravishankara January 10, 2017 (received for review June 30, 2016)

                Author contributions: L.S. and L.J.M. designed research; L.S. performed research; L.S. analyzed data; and L.S. and L.J.M. wrote the paper.

                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2787-7016
                Article
                PMC5347621 PMC5347621 5347621 201610708
                10.1073/pnas.1610708114
                5347621
                28223483
                7a28185e-40c8-4fdc-b3ee-ffedc7f377bc

                Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.

                History
                Page count
                Pages: 6
                Funding
                Funded by: NASA Air quality Applied Sciences Team and NASA-MAP
                Award ID: NNX13AO08G
                Funded by: National Institute of Environmental Health Services
                Award ID: R21ES022585
                Funded by: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 100000139
                Award ID: EPA-83575501-0
                Categories
                Physical Sciences
                Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences

                ozone,sea surface temperature,teleconnection,seasonal forecast

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