Responses in Ozone and Its Production Efficiency Attributable to Recent and Future Emissions Changes in the Eastern United States

Ozone production efficiency (OPE), a measure of the number of ozone (O₃) molecules produced per emitted NO_X (NO + NO₂) molecule, helps establish the relationship between NO_X emissions and O₃ formation. We estimate long-term OPE variability across the eastern United States using two novel approaches: an observation-based empirical method and a chemical transport model (CTM) method. The CTM approach explicitly controls for differing O₃ and NO_X reaction product (NO_Z) deposition rates and separately estimates OPEs from on-road mobile and electricity generating unit sources across a broad spatial scale. We find lower OPEs in urban areas and that average July OPE increased over the eastern United States domain between 2001 and 2011 from 11 to 14. CTM and empirical approaches agree at low NO_Z concentrations, but CTM OPEs are greater than empirical OPEs at high NO_Z. Our results support that NO_X emissions reductions become more effective at reducing O₃ at lower NO_Z concentrations. Electricity generating unit OPEs are higher than mobile OPEs except near emissions locations, meaning further utility NO_X emissions reductions will have greater per unit impacts on O₃ regionally.

Rural southeast Texas air quality measurements during the 2006 Texas Air Quality Study

The authors conducted air quality measurements of the criteria pollutants carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and ozone together with meteorological measurements at a park site southeast of College Station, TX, during the 2006 Texas Air Quality Study II (TexAQS). Ozone, a primary focus of the measurements, was above 80 ppb during 3 days and above 75 ppb during additional 8 days in summer 2006, suggestive of possible violations of the ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) in this area. In concordance with other air quality measurements during the TexAQS II, elevated ozone mixing ratios coincided with northerly flows during days after cold front passages. Ozone background during these days was as high as 80 ppb, whereas southerly air flows generally provided for an ozone background lower than 40 ppb. Back trajectory analysis shows that local ozone mixing ratios can also be strongly affected by the Houston urban pollution plume, leading to late afternoon ozone increases of as high as 50 ppb above background under favorable transport conditions. The trajectory analysis also shows that ozone background increases steadily the longer a southern air mass resides over Texas after entering from the Gulf of Mexico. In light of these and other TexAQS findings, it appears that ozone air quality is affected throughout east Texas by both long-range and regional ozone transport, and that improvements therefore will require at least a regionally oriented instead of the current locally oriented ozone precursor reduction policies.

Coastal Boundary Layer Influence on Pollutant Transport in New England

Air pollution episodes in northern New England often are caused by transport of pollutants over water. Two such episodes in the summer of 2002 are examined (22–23 July and 11–14 August). In both cases, the pollutants that affected coastal New Hampshire and coastal southwest Maine were transported over coastal waters in stable layers at the surface. These layers were at least intermittently turbulent but retained their chemical constituents. The lack of deposition or deep vertical mixing on the overwater trajectories allowed pollutant concentrations to remain strong. The polluted plumes came directly from the Boston, Massachusetts, area. In the 22–23 July case, the trajectories were relatively straight and dominated by synoptic-scale effects, transporting pollution to the Maine coast. On 11–14 August, sea breezes brought polluted air from the coastal waters inland into New Hampshire.