Long-term trends of surface ozone in Korea

Yeo, Min Ju; Kim, Yong Pyo

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.125352

Cited by 34 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…These features suggest that cases of high O 3 pollution have significantly contributed to the deterioration of urban air quality in South Korea, and this situation is not simply related to the level of other air pollutants or the scale of megacities. While the O 3 increase in the whole Korean peninsula has been reported (Yoo et al, 2015;Yeo and Kim, 2021), the main influencing factor is still not understood clearly. There were some trials to explain the O 3 increase in South Korea based on the meteorological effect (Seo et al, 2014), land use pattern (Yoo et al, 2015), and local emission effect (Shin et al, 2012;Yeo and Kim, 2021).…”

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

“…While the O 3 increase in the whole Korean peninsula has been reported (Yoo et al, 2015;Yeo and Kim, 2021), the main influencing factor is still not understood clearly. There were some trials to explain the O 3 increase in South Korea based on the meteorological effect (Seo et al, 2014), land use pattern (Yoo et al, 2015), and local emission effect (Shin et al, 2012;Yeo and Kim, 2021). The contribution of transboundary transport was also discussed (Oh et al, 2010;Choi et al, 2014).…”

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

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Temporal variability of surface air pollutants in megacities of South Korea

Lee

et al. 2022

Front. Environ. Sci.

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This study investigated the various temporal (weekly, monthly, and inter-annual) variability of air pollutants (PM10, SO2, NO2, O3, CO) in seven megacities in South Korea (Seoul, Busan, Incheon, Daegu, Gwangju, Daejeon, and Ulsan). We found that the general decreasing trend of PM10, SO2, NO2, and CO. An exceptional pollutant is O3, showing a clear increasing trend consistently in all seven megacities. Seasonally PM10, SO2, NO2, and CO have the highest level in winter due to the large fossil-fuel combustion for the heating demand, but O3 shows the maximum peak in summer related to the intensified photochemistry. Based on the analysis for percentile values of air pollutants, we recognized that some patterns of air pollutants in Korean megacities are overlooked: O3 increase is not perfectly related to the NO2 pattern, somewhat high SO2 in the coastal cities, ambiguous weekly pattern on Monday (as a weekday) and Sunday (as a weekend). Through this comprehensive analysis of multiple air pollutants using the percentile values, the characteristic for various temporal change of air pollutants in Korean megacities can be better understood, and some useful ideas for the air quality control in the urban region can be also excavated.

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Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

Temporal variability of surface air pollutants in megacities of South Korea

Lee

et al. 2022

Front. Environ. Sci.

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“…Gaudel et al (2018) reported rapidly increasing ozone trends from 2000 to 2014 in South Korea contrasting decreasing trends in North America and Europe utilizing available data from surface monitors, ozonesondes, and aircraft observations. Other studies also reported increasing ozone trends in South Korea for 2001-2018 (Lee et al, 2014;Shin et al, 2017;Lee et al, 2020;Yeo and Kim, 2021). Ozone in South Korea can be affected by ozone and its precursor in China.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Changes in surface ozone in South Korea on diurnal to decadal time scale for the period of 2001–2021

Kim

Jeong

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Abstract. Increasing trends of tropospheric ozone in South Korea in the last decades have reported in several studies, based on various metrics. In this study, we derived the trends of surface ozone in South Korea utilizing the daily maximum 8-hours average ozone concentrations (MDA8) measured at the surface from 2001 to 2021 and analyzed diurnal, seasonal, multi-decadal variations of this parameter at city, province, and background sites. The 4th highest MDA8 values have positive trends at 7 cities and 8 provinces throughout 2001–2021 with approximately 1–2 ppb yr-1 and were greater than 70 ppb after early 2010 for all sites, despite decreases of its precursor NO2 and CO. The Seoul Metropolitan Area (SMA) and the background sites have different diurnal and seasonal characteristics of MDA8 exceedances defined in this study (percentage of the data points with MDA8 > 70 ppb among all data points). SMA have much higher exceedances during summer than spring, while the background sites have much higher exceedances during spring than summer highlighting efficient local production of ozone in SMA during summer and strong influence of long-range transport during spring. The exceedances during spring and summer are similar for the rest of sites. The peaks of exceedances occur at 4–5 PM in SMA and most of locations, while exceedances mainly occur at 7–8 PM through night at the background sites. During spring of the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2021), the MDA8 ozone exceedances decreased for most of locations with large NOx reductions in South Korea and China compared to 2010–2019. The large decreases of the MDA8 ozone exceedances occur in particular at the background sites during spring. In Gosung, Gangwondo (~600 m above sea level), the exceedances drop to ~5 % from 30 % in springtime during the COVID-19 pandemic. The concept of decreases of ozone in the boundary layer in Seoul and Gangwon-do to reductions in the emissions was confirmed by regional model simulations. The reductions of ozone exceedances did not occur at the major cities and provinces during summer of the COVID-19 pandemic with much smaller decreases of NOx in South Korea and China compared to spring. This study demonstrates distinctions between spring and summer in the formation and transport of surface ozone in South Korea and the need of monitoring and modeling with focus on different processes in each season or a finer time scale.

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“…Surface ozone is a severe air quality problem in South Korea and has become steadily worse over the past two decades (Yeo and Kim, 2021;Kim et al, 2021). Ozone often exceeds 90 ppb in the Seoul Metropolitan Area (SMA) where 50% of South Korea's population is located (Miyazaki et al, 2018).…”

Section: Introduction 40mentioning

confidence: 99%

Why is ozone in South Korea and the Seoul Metropolitan Area so high and increasing?

Colombi

Jacob²,

Yang³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Abstract. Surface ozone pollution in South Korea has increased over the past two decades, despite efforts to decrease emissions, and is pervasively in exceedance of the maximum daily 8-hr average (MDA8) standard of 60 ppb. Here, we investigate the 2015–2019 trends in surface ozone and NO2 concentrations over South Korea and the Seoul Metropolitan Area (SMA), focusing on the 90th percentile MDA8 ozone as an air quality metric. We use a random forest algorithm to remove the effect of meteorological variability on the 2015–2019 trends and find an emission-driven ozone increase of up to 1.5 ppb a-1 in April–May while NO2 decreases by 22 %. GEOS-Chem model simulations including recent chemical updates can successfully simulate surface ozone over South Korea and China as well as the very high free tropospheric ozone observed above 2 km altitude (mean 75 ppb in May–June), and can reproduce the observed 2015–2019 emission-driven ozone trend over the SMA including its seasonality. Further investigation of the model trend for May, when meteorology-corrected ozone and its increase are the highest, reveals that a decrease in South Korea NOx emissions is the main driver for the SMA ozone increase. Although this result implies that decreasing volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions is necessary to decrease ozone, we find that SMA ozone would still remain above 80 ppb even if all anthropogenic emissions in South Korea were shut off. China contributes only 8 ppb to this elevated South Korea background and ship emissions contribute only a few ppb. Zeroing out all anthropogenic emissions in East Asia in the model indicates a remarkably high external background of 56 ppb, consistent with the high concentrations observed in the free troposphere, implying that the air quality standard in South Korea is not practically achievable unless this background external to East Asia can be decreased.

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Long-term trends of surface ozone in Korea

Cited by 34 publications

References 25 publications

Temporal variability of surface air pollutants in megacities of South Korea

Temporal variability of surface air pollutants in megacities of South Korea

Changes in surface ozone in South Korea on diurnal to decadal time scale for the period of 2001–2021

Why is ozone in South Korea and the Seoul Metropolitan Area so high and increasing?

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