2021
No Cover Photo

Share

531 Views
Generated with Avocode. icon 1 Mask color swatch
0 Downloads

Trends and variability of ozone pollution over the mountain-basin areas in Sichuan province during 2013–2020: Synoptic impacts and formation regimes

  • Chen Y., Han H., Zhang M., Zhao Y., Huang Y., Zhou M., Wang C., He G., Huang R., Luo B., Hu Y.
  • Summary

Sichuan Province, the most industrialized and populated region in southwestern China, has been experiencing severe ozone pollution in the boreal warm season (April–September). With a surface ozone monitoring network and reanalysis dataset, we find that nearly all cities in Sichuan Province showed positive increasing trends in the warm-season ozone levels. The warm-season daily maximum 8-h average (MDA8) ozone levels increased by 2.0 ppb (4.8%) year−1 as a whole, with slightly larger trends in some sites such as a site in Zigong (5.2 ppb year−1). Seasonally, the monthly ozone level in Sichuan peaks from May to August (varies with year). The predominant warm-season synoptic patterns were objectively identified based on concurrent hourly meteorological fields from ERA5. High-pressure systems promote ozone production and result in high ozone concentrations, due to strong solar radiation as well as hot and dry atmospheric conditions. The increased occurrence of high-pressure patterns probably drives the ozone increase in Sichuan. When ozone pollution is relatively weak (with MDA8 ozone around 170 µg m−3), the air quality standard could be achieved in the short term by a 25% reduction of NOx and VOCs emissions. Strengthened emission control is needed when ozone pollution is more severe. Our study provides implications for effective emission control of ozone pollution in Sichuan. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.