Trends in global tropospheric hydroxyl radical and methane lifetime since 1850 from AerChemMIP

Stevenson, David S.; Zhao, Alcide; Naik, Vaishali; O'Connor, Fiona M.; Tilmes, Simone; Zeng, Guang; Murray, Lee T.; Collins, William J.; Griffiths, Paul T.; Shim, Sungbo; Horowitz, Larry W.; Sentman, Lori T.; Emmons, Louisa

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-12905-2020

Articles | Volume 20, issue 21

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-12905-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

The Aerosol Chemistry Model Intercomparison Project...

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-12905-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 20, issue 21

Research article

|

05 Nov 2020

Research article |

| 05 Nov 2020

Trends in global tropospheric hydroxyl radical and methane lifetime since 1850 from AerChemMIP

David S. Stevenson, Alcide Zhao, Vaishali Naik, Fiona M. O'Connor, Simone Tilmes, Guang Zeng, Lee T. Murray, William J. Collins, Paul T. Griffiths, Sungbo Shim, Larry W. Horowitz, Lori T. Sentman, and Louisa Emmons

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Final revised paper (published on 05 Nov 2020)
Preprint (discussion started on 16 Jan 2020)
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Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC1: 'Convincing and Concise but not Complete', Anonymous Referee #1, 07 Feb 2020
RC2: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #2, 27 Mar 2020
AC1: 'Response to reviewers', David Stevenson, 22 May 2020

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by David Stevenson on behalf of the Authors (31 Aug 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (15 Sep 2020) by Jennifer G. Murphy

AR by David Stevenson on behalf of the Authors (18 Sep 2020) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

We present historical trends in atmospheric oxidizing capacity (OC) since 1850 from the latest generation of global climate models and compare these with estimates from measurements. OC controls levels of many key reactive gases, including methane (CH₄). We find small model trends up to 1980, then increases of about 9 % up to 2014, disagreeing with (uncertain) measurement-based trends. Major drivers of OC trends are emissions of CH₄, NO_x, and CO; these will be important for future CH₄ trends.