Ozone over the Oceans Focus Working Group
Working Group leads: Roberto Sommariva, U. of Birmingham/U. of Leicester, UK (rob.sommariva @ gmail.com)
Alfonso Saiz-Lopez, CSIC, Spain (a.saiz @ csic.es)
TOAR-II Steering Committee liaison: Yugo Kanaya, JAMSTEC, Japan (yugo @ jamstec.go.jp)
Established: January 13, 2021
The Ozone over the Oceans Focus Working Group has the following objectives:
The main objective of the WG is to assess the tropospheric ozone budget over the oceans, looking in particular at each process that affect its concentration (from chemical production and loss, to stratosphere/troposphere exchange to deposition) and how this has changed over the recent years. A major area of interest is the impact of halogen chemistry on the tropospheric O3 budget, in order to provide up-to-date information on this subject to the TOAR-II assessment report, as well as to the upcoming IPCC AR7. Other important aspects to be considered by the WG are the emissions of NOx and the impact on ozone concentrations of long range transport of NOy species in the remote marine environment (e.g., from biomass burning sources). The focus of the WG is on the oceanic regions and on the lower troposphere (marine boundary layer), a largely undersampled part of the planet. Polar regions are included, but only to the extent of the oceanic environment. Coastal areas are also included, although the main focus is on the open ocean and filtering may be necessary to exclude the effect of local and/or continental emissions. Likewise, the free troposphere is included but only to the extent of its impact on the MBL.
Further details are provided in the Ozone over the Oceans Focus Working Group research proposal (pdf)