Overview of the Long Island Sound Tropospheric Ozone Study (LISTOS)
Abstract
In early 2018, the Long Island Sound Tropospheric Ozone Study (LISTOS) began planning and conducting intensive measurements across the New York City (NYC) metro region and downwind over Long Island Sound with a goal of better understanding the sources and temporal emission profiles of the ozone precursors NOx and VOCs emitted within the region. An additional LISTOS goal is to track the evolution and movement of the region's urban pollution plume as it transports downwind over the Sound and into inland areas.
While air pollution levels have dropped markedly over the years across much of the United States, the NYC metro area continues to persistently violate both past and recently revised ground-level ozone air quality standards, and the region's air quality improvements have levelled off in recent years. This air quality problem afflicts not only the health and well-being of over 20 million people living in the New York City metro area, but also millions of people living in populated areas farther downwind. A unique feature of this chronic ozone problem is pollution transport in a northeast direction out of NYC over Long Island Sound. Strong westerly surface winds transport pollution into the Sound from NYC and other source regions farther upwind. The relatively cool waters of the Sound confine the pollutants in a shallow and stable marine boundary layer. Afternoon heating over coastal land creates a sea breeze with a southerly component carrying air pollutants onshore from the confined maritime layer, resulting in high ozone concentrations along the southern New England coast. This talk provides an overview of the NYC metro region's ozone problem, and the LISTOS research efforts undertaken to help support the region's air quality planning needs.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.A34B..01M
- Keywords:
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- 0305 Aerosols and particles;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTUREDE: 0345 Pollution: urban and regional;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTUREDE: 0365 Troposphere: composition and chemistry;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTUREDE: 0368 Troposphere: constituent transport and chemistry;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE