Abstract Surface ozone is substantially affected by climate change through the modulation of key meteorological parameters such as temperature. While the changes in temperature under a warming climate manifest in changes of both the mean and higher-order statistical moments, their individual role in ozone concentration changes has not been broadly investigated. To address this gap, we use a novel approach to isolate the impacts of mean warming and changes in higher-order moments of temperature on ozone over the southeastern U.S. (SEUS) and western U.S. (WUS) by the mid-21st century based on simulations under Technology Driver Model A1B and B2 scenarios from a regional modeling framework (Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with Chemistry (WRF/Chem)). Mean warming generally dominates the impacts of climate change on ozone, and higher-order moment temperature changes can also counteract 25% of the ozone exceedance of 70 ppbv over SEUS, and may offset 48% of the mean warming induced increase of ozone exceedance in heat waves during 2046–2055 under A1B. The opposite changes in the higher-order moments over SEUS and WUS lead to opposite impacts on ozone exceedance in the two regions. Our results suggest that improving prediction of both the mean and higher-order temperature changes may be crucial to constraining the future changes in ozone concentration to better inform air quality policy.