Polar Ozone Response to Energetic Particle Precipitation Over Decadal Time Scales: The Role of Medium-Energy Electrons

This is especially true for electrons having energies between about 30keV and 1MeV, so-called medium-energy electrons (MEE), where there has been a persistent lack of adequate description of MEE ionization in chemistry-climate simulations.

Here we use the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model (WACCM) and include EPP forcing by solar proton events, auroral electron precipitation, and a recently developed model of MEE precipitation. We contrast our results from three ensemble simulations (147 years) in total with those from the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) in order to investigate the importance of a more complete description of EPP to the middle atmospheric ozone, odd hydrogen, and odd nitrogen over decadal time scales.