Assessing the climate and air quality effects of future aerosol mitigation in India using a global climate model combined with statistical downscaling

We studied the potential of using machine learning to downscale global-scale climate model output towards ground station data. The aim was to simultaneously analyze both city-level air quality and regional- and global-scale radiative forcing values for anthropogenic aerosols. As the city-level air pollution values are typically underestimated in global-scale models, we used a machine learning approach to downscale fine particulate (PMinline-formula_2.5) concentrations towards measured values. We first simulated the global climate with the aerosol–climate model ECHAM-HAMMOZ and corrected the PMinline-formula_2.5 values for the Indian megacity New Delhi.

The downscaling procedure clearly improved the seasonal variation in the model data. The seasonal trends were much better captured in the corrected PMinline-formula_2.5 than in original ECHAM-HAMMOZ PMinline-formula_2.5 when compared to the reference PMinline-formula_2.5 from the ground stations. However, short-term variations showed less extreme values with the downscaling approach. We applied the downscaling model also to simulations where the aerosol emissions were following two different future scenarios: one following the current legislation and one assuming currently maximum feasible emission reductions. The corrected PMinline-formula_2.5 concentrations for the year 2030 showed that mitigating anthropogenic aerosols improves local air quality in New Delhi, with organic carbon reductions contributing most to these improvements.

In addition, aerosol emission mitigation also resulted in negative radiative forcing values over most of India. This was mainly due to reductions in absorbing black carbon emissions. For the two future emission scenarios modeled, the radiative forcing due to aerosol–radiation interactions over India was inline-formula $M7inlinescrollmathml-\mathrm{normal\; 0.09}\pm \mathrm{normal\; 0.26}$ 64pt10ptsvg-formulamathimg5410826610307fbe4ccf20377865b985 acp-23-3471-2023-ie00001.svg64pt10ptacp-23-3471-2023-ie00001.png and inline-formula $M8inlinescrollmathml-\mathrm{normal\; 0.53}\pm \mathrm{normal\; 0.31}$ 64pt10ptsvg-formulamathimg1bf71dda88eaecd9080b99ab0e18f24d acp-23-3471-2023-ie00002.svg64pt10ptacp-23-3471-2023-ie00002.png  W minline-formula⁻², respectively, while the effective radiative forcing values were inline-formula $M10inlinescrollmathml-\mathrm{normal\; 2.1}\pm \mathrm{normal\; 4.6}$ 52pt10ptsvg-formulamathimgfacb058cab3f36c24d910e6851f92ad8 acp-23-3471-2023-ie00003.svg52pt10ptacp-23-3471-2023-ie00003.png and inline-formula0.06±3.39 W minline-formula⁻², respectively. Although accompanied by relatively large uncertainties, the obtained results indicate that aerosol mitigation could bring a double benefit in India: better air quality and decreased warming of the local climate.

Our results demonstrate that downscaling and bias correction allow more versatile utilization of global-scale climate models. With the help of downscaling, global climate models can be used in applications where one aims to analyze both global and regional effects of policies related to mitigating anthropogenic emissions.