Responses of human health and vegetation exposure metrics to changes in ozone concentration distributions in the European Union, United States, and China

Lefohn, Allen S.; Malley, Christopher S.; Simon, Heather; Wells, Benjamin B.; Xu, Xiangde; Zhang, Li; Wang, Tao

doi:10.1016/j.atmosenv.2016.12.025

Cited by 82 publications

(68 citation statements)

References 101 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In all three regions the low and medium percentiles increase, while the highest percentiles decrease from 1990 until 2013. This was also shown by Simpson et al (2014) based on observations for northern Europe and based on observations for Europe, US and East Asia by Lefohn et al (2017). Further, using hourly O 3 observations, Karlsson et al (2017) showed that reduced concentrations in northern Europe were restricted to the highest O 3 concentrations during summer daytime, while the increase in low and mid-range concentrations occurred during wintertime at both day and night.…”

Section: Trend Over the Periodmentioning

confidence: 64%

Reanalysis of and attribution to near-surface ozone concentrations in Sweden during 1990–2013

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. We have constructed two data sets of hourly resolution reanalyzed near-surface ozone (O 3 ) concentrations for the period 1990-2013 for Sweden. Long-term simulations from a chemistry-transport model (CTM) covering Europe were combined with hourly ozone concentration observations at Swedish and Norwegian background measurement sites using retrospective variational data analysis. The reanalysis data sets show improved performance over the original CTM when compared to independent observations. In one of the reanalyses, we included all available hourly near-surface O 3 observations, whilst in the other we carefully selected time-consistent observations. Based on the second reanalysis we investigated statistical aspects of the distribution of the near-surface O 3 concentrations, focusing on the linear trend over the 24-year period. We show that high nearsurface O 3 concentrations are decreasing and low O 3 concentrations are increasing, which is reflected in observed improvement of many health and vegetation indices (apart from those with a low threshold).Using the CTM we also conducted sensitivity simulations to quantify the causes of the observed change, focusing on three factors: change in hemispheric background concentrations, meteorology and anthropogenic emissions. The rising low concentrations of near-surface O 3 in Sweden are caused by a combination of all three factors, whilst the decrease in the highest O 3 concentrations is caused by European O 3 precursor emissions reductions.While studying the impact of anthropogenic emissions changes, we identified systematic differences in the modeled trend compared to observations that must be caused by incorrect trends in the utilized emissions inventory or by too high sensitivity of our model to emissions changes.

show abstract

Section: Trend Over the Periodmentioning

confidence: 64%

Reanalysis of and attribution to near-surface ozone concentrations in Sweden during 1990–2013

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…With the threshold variable already defined, the maximum (x max ) and minimum (x min ) values of this variable are determined. Threshold value is calculated based on Equation (2).…”

Section: Statistical Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is a secondary pollutant (it is not directly emitted), generated by chemical reactions that occur in the atmosphere between primary air pollutants (nitrogen oxides-NO x -and volatile organic compounds-VOCs) catalyzed by sunlight [1]. The impact of this air pollutant has been studied in different areas [2][3][4][5]. Concerning human health, O 3 can cause injuries to airway epithelial cells (and lung diseases such as asthma), hyperplasia, headaches, and nausea, particularly in sensitive people, such as children and elderly [6][7][8][9][10].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterization of Surface Ozone Behavior at Different Regimes

Afonso

Pires

2017

Applied Sciences

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Previous studies showed that the influence of meteorological variables and concentrations of other air pollutants on O 3 concentrations changes at different O 3 concentration levels. In this study, threshold models with artificial neural networks (ANNs) were applied to characterize the O 3 behavior at an urban site (Porto, Portugal), describing the effect of environmental and meteorological variables on O 3 concentrations. ANN characteristics, and the threshold variable and value, were defined by genetic algorithms (GAs). The considered predictors were hourly average concentrations of NO, NO 2 , and O 3 , and meteorological variables (temperature, relative humidity, and wind speed) measured from January 2012 to December 2013. Seven simulations were performed and the achieved models considered wind speed (at 4.9 m·s −1 ), temperature (at 17.5 • C) and NO 2 (at 26.6 µg·m −3 ) as the variables that determine the change of O 3 behavior. All the achieved models presented a similar fitting performance: R 2 = 0.71-0.72, RMSE = 14.5-14.7 µg·m −3 , and the index of agreement of the second order of 0.91. The combined effect of these variables on O 3 concentration was also analyzed. This statistical model was shown to be a powerful tool for interpreting O 3 behavior, which is useful for defining policy strategies for human health protection concerning this air pollutant.

show abstract

“…Karlsson et al, 2007b;Lal et al, 2017) or region-specific (e.g. Karlsson et al, 2017;Lefohn et al, 2017). TOAR's collation of ozone data provides the first opportunity to understand presentday distribution and trends relevant to vegetation on a global scale.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tropospheric Ozone Assessment Report: Present-day tropospheric ozone distribution and trends relevant to vegetation

Mills

Pleijel

Malley

et al. 2018

Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene

Self Cite

286

182

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This Tropospheric Ozone Assessment Report (TOAR) on the current state of knowledge of ozone metrics of relevance to vegetation (TOAR-Vegetation) reports on present-day global distribution of ozone at over 3300 vegetated sites and the long-term trends at nearly 1200 sites.TOAR-Vegetationfocusses on three metrics over vegetation-relevant time-periods across major world climatic zones: M12, the mean ozone during 08:00–19:59; AOT40, the accumulation of hourly mean ozone values over 40 ppb during daylight hours, and W126 with stronger weighting to higher hourly mean values, accumulated during 08:00–19:59.Although the density of measurement stations is highly variable across regions, in general, the highest ozone values (mean, 2010–14) are in mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere, including southern USA, the Mediterranean basin, northern India, north, north-west and east China, the Republic of Korea and Japan. The lowest metric values reported are in Australia, New Zealand, southern parts of South America and some northern parts of Europe, Canada and the USA. Regional-scale assessments showed, for example, significantly higher AOT40 and W126 values in East Asia (EAS) than Europe (EUR) in wheat growing areas (p< 0.05), but not in rice growing areas. In NAM, the dominant trend during 1995–2014 was a significant decrease in ozone, whilst in EUR it was no change and in EAS it was a significant increase.TOAR-Vegetation provides recommendations to facilitate a more complete global assessment of ozone impacts on vegetation in the future, including: an increase in monitoring of ozone and collation of field evidence of the damaging effects on vegetation; an investigation of the effects on peri-urban agriculture and in mountain/upland areas; inclusion of additional pollutant, meteorological and inlet height data in the TOAR dataset; where not already in existence, establishing new region-specific thresholds for vegetation damage and an innovative integration of observations and modelling including stomatal uptake of the pollutant.

show abstract

Responses of human health and vegetation exposure metrics to changes in ozone concentration distributions in the European Union, United States, and China

Cited by 82 publications

References 101 publications

Reanalysis of and attribution to near-surface ozone concentrations in Sweden during 1990–2013

Reanalysis of and attribution to near-surface ozone concentrations in Sweden during 1990–2013

Characterization of Surface Ozone Behavior at Different Regimes

Tropospheric Ozone Assessment Report: Present-day tropospheric ozone distribution and trends relevant to vegetation

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About