Ozone recovery and climate change: Towards an interactive representation of stratospheric ozone in Earth System Models
Interactions between climate change and stratospheric ozone modify both, the evolution of surface climate and the recovery of the stratospheric ozone layer. Accounting for the climate feedbacks from changing ozone as well as the impact of climate change on the evolution of the ozone layer requires the interactive representation of stratospheric chemistry in Earth System Models. Our understanding of stratospheric ozone chemistry is now mature at the process scale and state of the art Chemical Transport Models (CTM) result in a realistic representation of the global ozone layer and the chemical processes affecting it. But the huge computational effort of these models makes it difficult to include the ozone layer interactively in Earth System Models (ESMs). We have developed SWIFT, an extremely fast module for interactive ozone chemistry in climate models. SWIFT allows for an interactive treatment of stratospheric ozone in standard ESMs with little numerical overhead. We will present the current status of SWIFT and results from coupling SWIFT to a climate model.