Future emissions of marine halogenated very-short lived substances under climate change

Halogenated Very Short-lived Substances (VSLS), such as bromoform, dibromomethane and methyl iodide, are naturally produced in the oceans and are involved in ozone depletion in the troposphere and the stratosphere. The effect of climate change on the oceanic emissions of these compounds is not well quantified. Based on present-day observed global oceanic and atmospheric concentrations, and historic and future data from three CMIP5 models, past and future sea-to-air fluxes of these VSLS are calculated. The simulations are used to infer possible effects of projected changes of physical forcing on emissions in different oceanic regimes. CMIP5 model output for 1979–2100 from the historical scenario and the RCP scenarios 2.6 and 8.5 are used as input data for the emission calculations. Of the parameters that have the main influence on the sea-to-air fluxes, the global sea surface temperatures show a steady increase during the twenty-first century, while the projected changes of sea surface wind speed is very small. The calculated emissions based on the historical CMIP5 model runs (1979–2005) increased over the 26 year period and agree well with the emissions based on ERA-Interim data. The future sea-to-air fluxes of VSLS generally increase during the twenty-first century under the assumption of constant concentration fields in the ocean and atmosphere. The multi-model mean global emissions of bromoform increase by 29.4 (9.0) between 1986 and 2005 and 2081–2100 under RCP 8.5 (2.6) and dibromomethane and methyl iodide emissions increase by 23.3 (6.4) and 5.5 (1.5), respectively. Uncertainties of the future emission estimates, driven by ongoing environmental changes such as changing oceanic productivity (not considered in this study) are discussed. © 2016 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrech