Ensemble-based analysis of the pollutant spreading intensity induced by climate change

The intensity of the atmospheric large-scale spreading can be characterized by a measure of chaotic systems, called topological entropy. A pollutant cloud stretches in an exponential manner in time, and in the atmospheric context the topological entropy corresponds to the stretching rate of its length. To explore the plethora of possible climate evolutions, we investigate here pollutant spreading in climate realizations of two climate models to learn what the typical spreading behavior is over a climate change. An overall decrease in the areal mean of the stretching rate is found to be typical in the ensembles of both climate models. This results in larger pollutant concentrations for several geographical regions implying higher environmental risk. A strong correlation is found between the time series of the ensemble mean values of the stretching rate and of the absolute value of the relative vorticity. Here we show that, based on the obtained relationship, the typical intensity of the spreading in an arbitrary climate realization can be estimated by using only the ensemble means of the relative vorticity data of a climate model.