Observed and predicted sensitivities of extreme surface ozone to meteorological drivers in three US cities

Fix, Miranda J.; Cooley, Daniel; Hodžić, Alma; Gilleland, Eric; Russell, Brook T.; Porter, William C.; Pfister, Gabriele

doi:10.1016/j.atmosenv.2017.12.036

Cited by 17 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…The use of a coarser resolution could have an impact in some regions with a complex orography where airflow is usually controlled by mesoscale phenomena (e.g. sea breeze and mountain-valley winds) or in regions characterized by highemission densities (Schaap et al, 2015;Gan et al, 2016). In such cases the use of a finer grid could be beneficial for capturing the variability of local processes.…”

Section: Chemistry Transport Models (Ctms)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Their results showed that the model underestimated the observed ozone sensitivities to temperature and relative humidity. Recently, Fix et al (2018) examined the capability of the NRCM-Chem model to capture the meteorological sensitivities of high or extreme ozone. Overall, they found substantial differences between the modelled and the observed sensitivities of high levels of ozone to meteorological drivers that were not consistent between the three regions of study.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A multi-model comparison of meteorological drivers of surface ozone over Europe

et al. 2018

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Abstract. The implementation of European emission abatement strategies has led to a significant reduction in the emissions of ozone precursors during the last decade. Ground-level ozone is also influenced by meteorological factors such as temperature, which exhibit interannual variability and are expected to change in the future. The impacts of climate change on air quality are usually investigated through air-quality models that simulate interactions between emissions, meteorology and chemistry. Within a multi-model assessment, this study aims to better understand how air-quality models represent the relationship between meteorological variables and surface ozone concentrations over Europe. A multiple linear regression (MLR) approach is applied to observed and modelled time series across 10 European regions in springtime and summertime for the period of 2000–2010 for both models and observations. Overall, the air-quality models are in better agreement with observations in summertime than in springtime and particularly in certain regions, such as France, central Europe or eastern Europe, where local meteorological variables show a strong influence on surface ozone concentrations. Larger discrepancies are found for the southern regions, such as the Balkans, the Iberian Peninsula and the Mediterranean basin, especially in springtime. We show that the air-quality models do not properly reproduce the sensitivity of surface ozone to some of the main meteorological drivers, such as maximum temperature, relative humidity and surface solar radiation. Specifically, all air-quality models show more limitations in capturing the strength of the ozone–relative-humidity relationship detected in the observed time series in most of the regions, for both seasons. Here, we speculate that dry-deposition schemes in the air-quality models might play an essential role in capturing this relationship. We further quantify the relationship between ozone and maximum temperature (mo3−T, climate penalty) in observations and air-quality models. In summertime, most of the air-quality models are able to reproduce the observed climate penalty reasonably well in certain regions such as France, central Europe and northern Italy. However, larger discrepancies are found in springtime, where air-quality models tend to overestimate the magnitude of the observed climate penalty.

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Section: Chemistry Transport Models (Ctms)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A multi-model comparison of meteorological drivers of surface ozone over Europe

et al. 2018

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“…These impacts have driven efforts to reduce ground-level O 3 in the United States, specifically targeting peak levels of O 3 concentrations through regulations that control anthropogenic precursor emissions, such as nitrogen oxides (NO x ) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). O 3 reduction efforts have been widely successful in reducing peak concentrations (Simon et al, 2015;Lefohn et al, 2017;Fleming et al, 2018), but impacts related to both human health and crop yields nonetheless persist (Cohen et al, 2017;Zhang et al, 2018;Shindell et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many studies have indeed made use of such data to assess O 3 trends (Jaffe and Ray, 2007;Cooper et al, 2012Cooper et al, , 2014Parrish et al, 2012;Simon et al, 2015). The recent publication of the Tropospheric Ozone Assessment Report (TOAR) database (Schultz et al, 2017) has created a rich observational dataset and further expanded the number of such assessments (e.g., Chang et al, 2017;Gaudel et al, 2018;Lefohn et al, 2018;Fleming et al, 2018;Mills et al, 2018b).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Magnitude, trends, and impacts of ambient long-term ozone exposure in the United States from 2000 to 2015

et al. 2020

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Abstract. Long-term exposure to ambient ozone (O3) is associated with a variety of impacts, including adverse human-health effects and reduced yields in commercial crops. Ground-level O3 concentrations for assessments are typically predicted using chemical transport models; however such methods often feature biases that can influence impact estimates. Here, we develop and apply artificial neural networks to empirically model long-term O3 exposure over the continental United States from 2000 to 2015, and we generate a measurement-based assessment of impacts on human-health and crop yields. Notably, we found that two commonly used human-health averaging metrics, based on separate epidemiological studies, differ in their trends over the study period. The population-weighted, April–September average of the daily 1 h maximum concentration peaked in 2002 at 55.9 ppb and decreased by 0.43 [95 % CI: 0.28, 0.57] ppb yr−1 between 2000 and 2015, yielding an ∼18 % decrease in normalized human-health impacts. In contrast, there was little change in the population-weighted, annual average of the maximum daily 8 h average concentration between 2000 and 2015, which resulted in a ∼5 % increase in normalized human-health impacts. In both cases, an aging population structure played a substantial role in modulating these trends. Trends of all agriculture-weighted crop-loss metrics indicated yield improvements, with reductions in the estimated national relative yield loss ranging from 1.7 % to 1.9 % for maize, 5.1 % to 7.1 % for soybeans, and 2.7 % for wheat. Overall, these results provide a measurement-based estimate of long-term O3 exposure over the United States, quantify the historical trends of such exposure, and illustrate how different conclusions regarding historical impacts can be made through the use of varying metrics.

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“…Ground-level ozone (O 3 ) is generated by photochemical reactions involving nitrogen oxides (NO x ) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) (Finlayson-Pitts and Pitts, 1997;Sillman, 1999). Enhanced surface O 3 concentrations increase premature mortality (e.g., Bell et al, 2006;Anenberg et al, 2010;Lelieveld et al, 2015;Nuvolone et al, 2018) and reduce crop yields (e.g., Fuhrer et al, 1997;Krupa et al, 1998;Ainsworth et al, 2012;Mills et al, 2018). O 3 pollution events (OPEs) occur frequently in megacities with sufficient O 3 precursors during summertime when solar radiation is strong (Solomon et al, 2000; T. J.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A typical weather pattern for ozone pollution events in North China

2019

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Abstract. Ground-level observations, reanalyzed meteorological fields and a 3-D global chemical and transport model (GEOS-Chem) were applied in this study to investigate ozone (O3) pollution events (OPEs) in North China (36.5–40.5∘ N, 114.5–119.5∘ E) during 2014–2017. Ozone pollution days (OPDs) were defined as days with maximum daily averaged 8 h (MDA8) concentrations over North China larger than 160 µg m−3, and OPEs were defined as periods with 3 or more consecutive OPDs. Observations showed that there were 167 OPDs and 27 OPEs in North China during 2014–2017, in which 123 OPDs and 21 OPEs occurred from May to July. We found that OPEs in North China occurred under a typical weather pattern with high daily maximum temperature (Tmax), low relative humidity (RH), anomalous southerlies and divergence in the lower troposphere, an anomalous high-pressure system at 500 hPa, and an anomalous downward air flow from 500 hPa to the surface. Under such a weather pattern, chemical production of O3 was high between 800 and 900 hPa, which was then transported downward to enhance O3 pollution at the surface. A standardized index I_OPE was defined by applying four key meteorological parameters, including Tmax, RH, meridional winds at 850 hPa (V850) and zonal winds at 500 hPa (U500). I_OPE can capture approximately 80 % of the observed OPDs and OPEs, which has implications for forecasting OPEs in North China.

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Observed and predicted sensitivities of extreme surface ozone to meteorological drivers in three US cities

Cited by 17 publications

References 38 publications

A multi-model comparison of meteorological drivers of surface ozone over Europe

A multi-model comparison of meteorological drivers of surface ozone over Europe

Magnitude, trends, and impacts of ambient long-term ozone exposure in the United States from 2000 to 2015

A typical weather pattern for ozone pollution events in North China

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