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Understanding the spatiotemporal variability and trends of surface ozone over India

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Abstract

With rising anthropogenic activities, surface ozone levels have increased across different parts of the world including India. Previous studies have shown that surface ozone shows distinct characteristics across India but these results are based on isolated locations and any comprehensive and spatiotemporally consistent study about surface ozone variability lacks thus far. Keeping these facts in mind, we utilize ground-based observations and reanalysis datasets to investigate spatiotemporal variations of surface ozone and its linkages with meteorology and precursors over Indian region. A validation exercise shows that the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service Reanalysis (CAMSRA) reasonably compares against the ground-based observations showing better correlations (> 0.7) over southern regions and relatively lesser (> 0.5) correlations over northern and eastern regions. We have further quantified this agreement in terms of range, mean absolute error (MAE), and root mean square error (RMSE). A time series analysis shows that the CAMSRA captures seasonal variations irrespective of location. Spatial distribution of surface ozone shows higher (lower) concentrations of about 40–60 ppb (15–20 ppb) during pre-monsoon (monsoon) months over northern and western parts and peninsular India. A prominent increase during May is noted over the northern region, especially over the Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP). These seasonal variations are linked to solar radiation (SR), temperature, low-level circulation, and boundary layer height (BLH). CAMSRA-based surface ozone shows increasing trends across all four regions (north, east, west, and south India) and also India as a whole (0.069 ppb year−1, p = 0.001) with highest trends over the eastern region. Furthermore, principal component analysis (PCA) reveals that the first (second) mode shows a high percentage variance explained, ranging between 30 and 50% (10–20%). The corresponding PC-1 time series exhibits a notable increase in the surface ozone over south and central India, which corroborates the trend obtained through the area averaged time series. The second mode (PC-2) indicates prominent interannual variability over the IGP (southern India) in the pre-monsoon (post-monsoon). During the monsoon season, an interesting dipole pattern is noticeable, which closely resembles the active and break spell patterns of the Indian summer monsoon. Further, we quantify the weightage of precursors and meteorological parameters on surface ozone concentrations. The analysis suggests that PC1 of surface ozone is strongly influenced by CO and NOx (the precursors) while meteorology seems to dominate the PC2 during the pre-monsoon season. Overall, the results indicate that changes in the precursors or meteorological conditions have significant influences on the surface ozone concentrations across India.

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Data Availability

All the data sets used in this present study are available publicly and the same has been provided in the manuscript as well as in the acknowledgement section.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) India for providing ground-based observations. We also acknowledge the ECMWF for making CAMS and ERA5 reanalysis data publicly available used to carry out the present study. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their useful and constructive comments on our manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Atmospheric Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, 110016, India

    Ravi Kumar Kunchala & Vivek Seelanki

  2. Centre for Climate Change Research, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Pune, 411 008, India

    Bhupendra Bahadur Singh

  3. Physical Science and Engineering Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, Saudi Arabia

    Rama Krishna Karumuri

  4. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Mohali, Punjab, 140306, India

    Raju Attada

  5. National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Noida, 201309, India

    Kondapalli Niranjan Kumar

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  1. Ravi Kumar Kunchala
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RKK and BBS conceptualized the problem and wrote the manuscript. RKK, BBS, KRK, KNK, and VS performed the analysis. AR provided the scientific inputs on the discussions and edited the manuscript. All authors contributed toward the discussions and interpretation of the results.

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Correspondence to Ravi Kumar Kunchala.

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Kunchala, R.K., Singh, B.B., Karumuri, R.K. et al. Understanding the spatiotemporal variability and trends of surface ozone over India. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 6219–6236 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-16011-w

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