IAS Seminar "The Tropospheric Ozone Assessment Report (TOAR): Accomplishments, Open Questions and New Frontiers"

Speaker:

Owen R. Cooper, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado; NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory, Boulder, USA

Abstract:

Tropospheric ozone is a greenhouse gas and pollutant detrimental to human health and crop and ecosystem productivity. Since 1990 a large portion of the anthropogenic emissions that react in the atmosphere to produce ozone has shifted from North America and Europe to Asia. This rapid shift, coupled with limited ozone monitoring in developing nations, left scientists unable to answer the most basic questions: Which regions of the world have the greatest human and plant exposure to ozone pollution? Is ozone continuing to decline in nations with strong emissions controls? To what extent is ozone increasing in the developing world? How can the atmospheric sciences community facilitate access to the ozone metrics necessary for quantifying ozones impact on human health and crop/ecosystem productivity?

To answer these questions the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry Project (IGAC) initiated the Tropospheric Ozone Assessment Report (TOAR). With over 220 member scientists and air quality specialists from 36 nations, TOAR’s mission is to provide the research community with an up-to-date scientific assessment of tropospheric ozone’s global distribution and trends from the surface to the tropopause. Led by Forschungszentrum J¨ulich, TOAR built the world’s largest database of surface ozone observations and generated ozone exposure metrics at thousands of measurement sites around the world. The open-access database is facilitating new research on the global-scale impact of ozone on climate, human health and crop/ecosystem productivity. This presentation will highlight some of these new results, focusing on the regions of the world where ozone air quality has improved or degraded. While TOAR has shed new light on ozones global distribution and trends, the effort has also established the limits of our knowledge. For example data limitations prevent us from determining if the global tropospheric ozone burden has increased or decreased over the past decade. The presentation will conclude with an examination of knowledge gaps and outstanding questions pertaining to tropospheric ozone, and some thoughts on the new frontiers for tropospheric ozone research.

Owen R. Cooper was invited by Dr. Martin Schultz (JSC).