Ozone trends across the United States over a period of decreasing NOx and VOC emissions

Abstract

In this work, we evaluate ambient ozone trends at urban, suburban, and rural monitoring sites across the United States over a period of decreasing NOx and VOC emissions (1998-2013). We find that decreasing ozone trends generally occur in the summer, in less urbanized areas, and at the upper end of the ozone distribution. Conversely, increasing ozone trends generally occur in the winter, in more urbanized areas, and at the lower end of the ozone distribution. The 95(th) percentile ozone concentrations decreased at urban, suburban, and rural monitors by 1-2 ppb/yr in the summer and 0.5-1 ppb/yr in the winter. In the summer, there are both increasing and decreasing trends in fifth percentile ozone concentrations of less than 0.5 ppb/yr at urban and suburban monitors, while fifth percentile ozone concentrations at rural monitors decreased by up to 1 ppb/yr. In the winter, fifth percentile ozone concentrations generally increased by 0.1-1 ppb/yr. These results demonstrate the large scale success of U.S. control strategies targeted at decreasing peak ozone concentrations. In addition, they indicate that as anthropogenic NOx emissions have decreased, the ozone distribution has been compressed, leading to less spatial and temporal variability.