Identification

Title

Quantifying the contribution of inflow on surface ozone over California during summer 2008

Abstract

Transported pollution has been recognized as making a potentially strong impact on air quality in the western U.S., but large uncertainties remain in quantifying its contribution. Assessing the role of pollution transport in relation to local emissions and meteorology is especially important in light of possibly lower ozone standards and projected increases in transpacific pollution transport. We apply the Weather Research and Forecasting with Chemistry model to analyze the role of upwind pollution (“inflow”) to surface ozone over California during the Arctic Research of the Composition of the Troposphere from Aircraft and Satellites campaign in June–July 2008 over California. Comparisons of the model to surface and aircraft observations, ozonesondes, and satellite retrievals show an overall good agreement; a low bias (~5 ppb) in free tropospheric ozone is attributed to low ozone at the boundaries and likely places our estimated inflow contribution on the lower side. Most other studies applied sensitivity analyses, while we use a synthetic ozone tracer, which provides a quantitative estimate of the budget. We estimate that on average 10 ± 9 ppb of surface afternoon ozone over California is attributed to ozone and ozone precursors entering the region from outside. This contribution features a significant spatial and temporal variability. While in most high ozone events, transported pollution plays a small role compared to local influences, for some instances, the impact can be substantial. Omitting data impacted by wildfires, we estimate the 90th percentile of the relative contribution of O3INFLOW to 8 h ozone >75 ppb as 10%. Our results also indicate that inflow might have a stronger impact on surface ozone in less polluted compared to polluted areas.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d76t0nkr

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2013-11-16T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact