Africa Focus Working Group
Working Group leads: Adegun Ayodeji Oluwole (University of Nigeria, Nigeria) and Raeesa Moolla (University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa)
TOAR-II Steering Committee liaison: Erika von Schneidemesser (RIFS, Germany)
Established: July, 2023
The Africa Focus Working Group has the following objectives:
The aim of this working group is to collect and analyse in-situ Ozone measurements from monitoring
sites across Africa, ozonosonde data, and/or flight retrieved data; and precursor pollutants. The
assessment will also highlight lack of long term data, challenges, problems associated specifically
with data capture and analysis on the continent as well land use change and its effect on ozone
levels (and vice versa).
Furthermore, analysis of land use change in Africa will also form part of the main objectives (and
inform the methodological design) of the project. Land use change drives economic growth in Africa,
and at the same time deteriorates air quality and limits the ability to cope with climate change.
There are key trends in urbanization, deforestation, climate adaptation/mitigation, and agricultural
practices. An assessment of how land use (change) is affecting the potential for O3 pollution is
needed. This could start from establishing African land use trends over the last 20 years themselves
(e.g. with Sentinel-data), and then relate these trends to changes in precursor emissions (NOx,
VOCs), changes in meteorological regimes (dynamics, radiation), and the potential for O3 deposition
across different biomes.