Urban Ozone Focus Working Group
Working Group leads: Keding Lu, Peking University, China (lukeding @ pku.edu.cn)
James Lee, University of York, UK (james.lee @ york.ac.uk)
TOAR-II Steering Committee liaison:
Erika von Schneidemesser, Research Institute for Sustainability, Potsdam, Germany, (evs @ rifs-potsdam.de)
Established: March 18, 2021
The Impact of Urban Ozone Photochemistry on the Tropospheric Ozone Budget - Focus Working Group has the following objectives:
As seen from satellite maps of column NO2 and HCHO, urban areas (especially mega city-clusters of > 5 million inhabitants), are a major source of NOx and anthropogenic VOCs. Therefore, emissions from urban areas are likely to be one of the major sources of ozone in the troposphere. TOAR-II will involve scientists from the atmospheric sciences community to study urban-scale ozone issues, and address the following scientific questions:
1) How do cities (especially in northern mid-latitudes) in different phases of development contribute to tropospheric ozone from a hemispheric perspective?
2) How will future changes of urban emissions influence tropospheric ozone concentrations, both through changes in ozone precursor concentrations and levels of PM (which can influence tropospheric ozone concentrations through heterogeneous uptake of radical species and absorption of solar radiation)?
3) What is the impact of background tropospheric ozone on urban ozone concentrations?
4) Which factors of urban planning have the greatest impact on urban and downwind regional ozone levels?