Climate‐driven exceedance of total (wet + dry) nitrogen (N) + sulfur (S) deposition to forest soil over the conterminous U.S

Nitrogen (N) and sulfur (S) depositions are much mitigated over the conterminous U.S. (CONUS) but deposition exceedance still exists on forest soil. In addition, the empirical approach is usually used but only provides a spatially constant critical load (CL). Therefore, the CL derived from steady‐state mass balance equation is used to study the CL exceedance on forest soil over the CONUS. The multimodel mean (MMM) of global climate‐chemistry models in 2000s indicates that total (wet + dry) N deposition alone over 10.32% of forest soil exceeds the CL, but a higher percent (30.16%) is observed by the N + S deposition, which highlights the necessity of considering S deposition. In 2050s, less CL‐exceeded forest soil is projected and the exceedance amount is lower as well, mainly attributed to the strong reduction of projected NOX and SO2 emissions. By first projecting the future CL due to the climate change, the CL exceedance could further decrease as the air temperature is projected to increase rapidly and lead to higher CL in the future. The CL exceedance by N deposition alone is likely to be dominated by NOy in 2000s but NHX in 2050s because of the enhanced NH3 emission. Moreover, both in 2000s and 2050s, using the CL generated by different aggregation methods can cause up to 33 times difference between the corresponding CL exceedance. This suggests that several regions are under the marginal threat of either N or N + S deposition and different CL can influence the results significantly. Key Points The N + S deposition lead to 2.92 times more critical load exceeded areas than N deposition in 2000s Critical load (CL) exceedance by N deposition is dominated by NOy in 2000s but likely by NHX in 2050s The projected increase of air temperature can lead to fewer CL exceeded areas in 2050s