Lake Michigan and Lake Superior air quality: The 1994-2003 LADCO Aircraft Project (LAP)

The goal of the 1994 to 2003 LADCO Airplane Project (LAP) was to study ozone formation over Lake Michigan so that equitable regional control strategies could be devised. During the ten year LAP campaign, a total of 328 flights were flown on 81 days over Lake Michigan and its southern and western boundaries. LAP also monitored air quality over Lake Superior and other areas in the Midwestern and southern United States. From 2001 to 2003, 117 flights were conducted over Lake Superior, Isle Royale National Park, Painted Rocks National Lakeshore and the Seeney National Wildlife Refuge in Michigan. 63 flights were conducted over St. Louis and 58 flights over the Dolly Sods Wilderness Area in West Virginia. We are looking for collaborators to help us analyze this vast data archive. Our first paper (Atmospheric Environment 45 (2011) 3192-3202) documented the project and presented results of our ozone analysis. Our results support the hypothesis of Dye et al. (1995), who found that the atmosphere over Lake Michigan is stable in the summer due to the air water temperature difference, which creates an efficient reaction chamber for ozone formation. They also hypothesized that the southwest winds characteristic of ozone-conducive conditions transport ozone further north over the lake before it crosses the shoreline onto land. We found that below 200 m above the lake, ozone formation is VOC-limited in the morning and becomes NOx limited in the afternoon. Above 200 m, ozone formation is NOx-limited throughout the day. The onshore NOx and VOC diurnal cycles peak during the early morning rush hour and are clearly linked to traffic patterns. Over the lake, VOC and NOy concentrations peak during the mid-morning rather than the early morning, supporting the hypothesis that the land breeze transports VOC and NOy over the lake. The diurnal NOx pattern over Lake Michigan is less clearly defined than the VOC pattern possibly as a result of emissions from five coal-burning power plants located on the Lake Michigan shoreline. Using a "photochemical clock" model, we estimated the climatological average hydroxyl radical concentration over the lake to be (9.43 + 5.88) × 106 molecule cm-3 near Chicago and (8.43 + 3.68) ×106 molecule cm-3 near Milwaukee.