Riley, M.L.; Jiang, N.; Duc, H.N.; Azzi, M. Long-Term Trends in Inferred Continental Background Ozone in Eastern Australia. Atmosphere2023, 14, 1104.
Riley, M.L.; Jiang, N.; Duc, H.N.; Azzi, M. Long-Term Trends in Inferred Continental Background Ozone in Eastern Australia. Atmosphere 2023, 14, 1104.
Riley, M.L.; Jiang, N.; Duc, H.N.; Azzi, M. Long-Term Trends in Inferred Continental Background Ozone in Eastern Australia. Atmosphere2023, 14, 1104.
Riley, M.L.; Jiang, N.; Duc, H.N.; Azzi, M. Long-Term Trends in Inferred Continental Background Ozone in Eastern Australia. Atmosphere 2023, 14, 1104.
Abstract
A better understanding of background tropospheric ozone delivers multiple benefits. Robust estimates of regional background ozone assist policy makers to understand the limits to reducing ozone by controlling anthropogenic emissions alone and assist in characterising changes in the atmospheric environment and its composition. Long time series of background ozone measurements can also help quantify the influence of human activity on the global and regional atmosphere. Background tropospheric ozone measurements representative of continental air masses are however scarce in Australia, limiting our knowledge of background atmospheric composition. Here we use k-means clustering to identify a cluster of measurements from the long-term monitoring station at Oakdale, NSW which are likely to be representative of background air. The cluster is associated with NOx-limited air masses of continental origin. From this analysis we estimate background ozone representative of Eastern Australia. We find recent (2017-2022) mean ozone mixing ratios of 28.5 ppb and identify a statistically significant (α=0.05) trend in the mean of +1.8 (1.0 – 2.8) ppb/decade. Our methods demonstrate that some long-term monitoring stations within or near urban areas can provide suitable conditions and datasets for regional Global Atmosphere Watch monitoring.
Keywords
background ozone; k-means clustering; ozone trends; air quality monitoring
Subject
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Atmospheric Science and Meteorology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
