Decadal tropospheric ozone radiative forcing estimations with offline radiative modelling and IAGOS aircraft observations

Abstract. We use an offline radiative transfer model driven by IAGOS aircraft observations to estimate the tropospheric ozone radiative forcing (RF) at decadal time scale (three time intervals with a common starting period in 1994–2004 and ending periods: 2011–2016, 2017–2019 and 2020–2023), over 11 selected Northern Hemispheric regions. We found a positive trend in the tropospheric ozone column (TOC) for the three time intervals, even if decadal trends are progressively reduced from 2011–2016 (ΔTOC +3.6 ± 2.0 DU, +14.8 ± 11.5 %, 2.5 ± 1.4 DU per decade) to 2017–2019 (ΔTOC +3.9 ± 3.9 DU, +17.5 ± 22.1 %, 2.0 ± 2.0 DU per decade) to 2020–2023 (ΔTOC +3.5 ± 2.8 DU, +13.8 ± 12.1 %, 1.5 ± 1.2 DU per decade). The progressively reduced average TOC decadal trends in 2020–2023 and 2017–2019, with respect to 2011–2016, originate from stagnation in ΔTOC in more recent time intervals (especially in the COVID and post-COVID crisis periods) and decreases of trends of the more radiative efficient upper tropospheric ozone. These average trend reductions are accompanied with reductions of the tropospheric ozone RF, from 2011–2016 (41.6 ± 24.0 mW m−2 per decade) to 2017–2019 (27.6 ± 36.7 mW m−2 per decade) to 2020–2023 (14.6 ± 25.6 mW m−2 per decade). The total tropospheric ozone RF sensitivity varies between 18.4 ± 7.4 mW m−2 DU−1, in 2011–2016, and 11.1 ± 10.4 mW m−2 DU−1, in 2020–2023. Our decadal RF estimates vary from being ∼ 25 %–90 % larger (2011–2016 and 2017–2019 ending periods) to ∼ 30 % smaller (2020–2023 ending period) than the most recent global average RF estimates with online modelling. Our study underlines the importance of the evolution of ozone vertical profiles for the tropospheric ozone RF.