Long-term changes in lower tropospheric baseline ozone concentrations at northern mid-latitudes

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Abstract

Changes in baseline (here understood as representative of continental to hemispheric scales) tropospheric O3 concentrations that have occurred at northern mid-latitudes over the past six decades are quantified from available measurement records with the goal of providing benchmarks to which retrospective model calculations of the global O3 distribution can be compared. Eleven data sets (ten ground-based and one airborne) including six European (beginning in the 1950's and before), three North American (beginning in 1984) and two Asian (beginning in 1991) are analyzed. When the full time periods of the data records are considered a consistent picture emerges; O3 has increased at all sites in all seasons at approximately 1% yr-1 relative to the site's 2000 yr mixing ratio in each season. For perspective, this rate of increase sustained from 1950 to 2000 corresponds to an approximate doubling. There is little if any evidence for statistically significant differences in average rates of increase among the sites, regardless of varying length of data records. At most sites (most definitively at the European sites) the rate of increase has slowed over the last decade (possibly longer), to the extent that at present O3 is decreasing at some sites in some seasons, particularly in summer. The average rate of increase before 2000 shows significant seasonal differences (1.08 ± 0.09, 0.89 ± 0.10, 0.85 ± 0.11 and 1.21 ± 0.12% yr-1 in spring, summer, autumn and winter, respectively, over North America and Europe). © 2012 Author(s). CC Attribution 3.0 License.

Figures

  • Fig. 1. General intercontinental transport processes. Blue text on the left applies to continental boundary layer processes, yellow/red text apples to low-level transport and black/white text applies to high-altitude transport (based upon HTAP, 2010; original figure courtesy of O. Cooper).
  • Table 1. Ozone data sets investigated in this work.
  • Fig. 2. Seasonal O3 averages measured at Hohenpeissenberg Germany. The solid lines indicate linear regressions for the data up to and including year 2000. The dotted lines give the quadratic regressions for the entire data sets.
  • Table 2. Parameters of linear regression using least-squares fits to the Hohenpeissenberg data set. CL indicates the 95 % confidence limits of the respective parameters, and r is linear correlation coefficient. Units are ppbv, ppbv yr−1 and ppbv yr−2.
  • Table 3. Parameters of linear regression using least-squares fits to the Mace Head data set for the indicated time periods. CL indicates the 95 % confidence limits of the respective parameters, and r is linear correlation coefficient. Units are ppbv and ppbv yr−1
  • Fig. 3. Seasonal O3 averages measured in the European marine boundary layer (MBL) at Mace Head, Ireland, and in the North American MBL along the US Pacific Coast. Lines indicate linear and quadratic regressions for the complete data sets in the same format as Fig. 2.
  • Fig. 4. Seasonal O3 averages measured at high elevation (≈ 1.9 km) sites in western North America at Lassen NP and in Japan at Mt. Happo. Lines indicate linear and quadratic regressions for the complete data sets in the same format as Fig. 2.
  • Fig. 5. Comparison of springtime trends in O3 concentrations measured at all sites in Europe (left panels) and western North America and Japan (right panels). The lines (in color) indicate the linear (upper panels) and quadratic (lower panels) regressions to the data.

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CITATION STYLE

APA

Parrish, D. D., Law, K. S., Staehelin, J., Derwent, R., Cooper, O. R., Tanimoto, H., … Chan, E. (2012). Long-term changes in lower tropospheric baseline ozone concentrations at northern mid-latitudes. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 12(23), 11485–11504. https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-12-11485-2012

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