Extratropical Age of Air trends and causative factors in climate projection simulations

Abstract. Climate model simulations show a Brewer-Dobson circulation (BDC) acceleration in the course of climate change. While the mechanisms for the BDC strengthening are well understood, there are still open questions concerning its dynamical driving. Mean age of stratospheric air (AoA) is a useful transport diagnostic for accessing changes of the BDC. Analysing AoA from a subset of Chemistry Climate Model Initiative part 1 climate projection simulations, we find a remarkable agreement between most of the models in simulating the largest negative AoA trends in the extratropical lower to middle stratosphere of both hemispheres (approximately between 20 gpkm and 25 gpkm and 20°–50°N/S). We show that the occurrence of AoA trend minima in those regions is directly related to the climatological AoA distribution being sensitive to an upward shift of the circulation in response to a climate change. But also other factors like a reduction of aging by mixing (AbM) and residual circulation transit times (RCTTs) contribute to the AoA distribution changes by widening the AoA isolines. Furthermore we analyze the time evolution of AbM and RCTT trends in the extratropics and examine the connection to possible drivers like local residual circulation strength, net tropical upwelling and wave driving. However, after the correction for a vertical shift of pressure levels, we find only seasonally significant trends of residual circulation strength and zonal mean wave forcing (resolved and unresolved) without a clear relation between the trends of the analyzed quantities. This indicates that additional causative factors may influence the AoA, RCTT and AbM trends. Namely, we postulate a possible influence of stratospheric shrinkage on RCTT, AbM and therefore also on AoA trends. In this study, we postulate that the shrinkage of the stratosphere has the potential to influence the RCTT and AbM trends and thereby cause additional AoA changes over time.