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Impact of meteorological conditions at multiple scales on ozone concentration in the Yangtze River Delta

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Abstract

Tropospheric ozone is known to have adverse effects on human health. Ozone pollution events are often associated with specific atmospheric circulation conditions. Therefore, studying the relationship between atmospheric circulation and ozone is particularly important for early warning and forecasting of ozone pollution events. Focusing on the Yangtze River Delta region, particularly in four important large industrial cities (Xuzhou, Nanjing, Shanghai, and Hangzhou) in the Yangtze River Delta, the T-mode objective classification method was applied to classify the weather circulation that mainly affects the Yangtze River Delta region into nine types. Local wind fields for the four industrial cities were classified according to their propensity for ventilation, stagnation, and recirculation based on the Allwine and Whiteman method. Based on the analysis of large-scale atmospheric circulation, we concluded that certain circulation patterns correspond to excessive ozone concentrations, while other circulation patterns correspond to good air quality. Moreover, ozone pollution was not closely related to local regional transmission. The importance of high temperatures in potentiating ozone pollution was also identified in the study area, whereas the effect of relative humidity was negligible. Finally, the importance of the different scale atmospheric motions was analyzed by studying two specific ozone pollution events in Xuzhou area (March, 2019) and Nanjing area (July–August, 2017). This analysis was complemented by HYSPLIT model’s outputs to simulate the pollutant diffusion path. Regarding the first episode, ozone concentration is often closely related to the slowly approaching thermal high-pressure system. In the second episode, local transmission had little effect on the generation and spread of ozone pollution. Furthermore, and comparing the circulation conditions with local meteorological factors, it was found that the increase in ozone concentration was often accompanied by higher temperature, and the response to humidity was not clear.

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Data availability

The datasets used or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the authors and developers of the COST733 classification software.

Funding

This study was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2017YFC1501803), the National Natural Science Foundation Committee of China (41475021, 41375154, and 41405146), and The Chinese Prime Minister Fund (DQGG0104).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National University of Defense Technology, College of Meteorology and Oceanology, Nanjing, 211101, China

    Zezheng Zhao, Zeming Zhou, Huadong Du, Jie Xiang & Chengjun Zhou

  2. Instituto Dom Luíz, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, Edifício C1, Piso 1, 1749-016, Lisboa, Portugal

    Ana Russo

  3. Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Jiping Zhang

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  1. Zezheng Zhao
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  5. Jie Xiang
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  7. Chengjun Zhou
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Contributions

Zezheng Zhao: Conceptualization, Visualization, Investigation.

Zeming Zhou: Resources.

Ana Russo: Writing - Review & Editing.

Huadong Du: Software, Funding acquisition.

Jie Xiang: Data Curation.

Jiping Zhang: Methodology.

Chengjun Zhou: Conceptualization, Writing - Original Draft, Supervision.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Chengjun Zhou.

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Zhao, Z., Zhou, Z., Russo, A. et al. Impact of meteorological conditions at multiple scales on ozone concentration in the Yangtze River Delta. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 62991–63007 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-15160-2

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