Mechanisms of Urban Ozone Pollution
A special issue of Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433). This special issue belongs to the section "Air Quality".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 5 September 2024 | Viewed by 2192
Special Issue Editors
Interests: air quality modeling; stratospheric intrusion; ozone and PM2.5 co-control
Interests: ozone; aerosol; numerical simulation; source apportionment
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The complexity of ozone formation creates several challenges for policy-makers in formulating an effective ozone pollution control strategy. Continued exacerbation of ozone pollution because of climate change have highlighted the dire need to better understand the physical and chemical processes that increase the levels of ozone pollution. Delineating the complex photochemical process leading to ozone formation, identifying the relationship between ozone pollution and meteorology, and quantifying the ozone contribution of different source categories and source regions can help to guide contingency control measures for ozone de-spiking over the major city clusters worldwide. This Special Issue of Atmosphere will consider high-quality papers that advance a better understanding of the mechanism of urban ozone pollution.
This Special Issue calls for original research papers on urban ozone pollution, including field observations, air quality model, smog chamber simulation, and machine learning. Some potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
- The formation and transport of ozone in the atmosphere;
- Ozone pollution control;
- Interaction between ozone pollution and meteorology;
- Observation of ozone and its precursors;
- Ozone source apportionment in the urban area;
- Interactions between ozone and aerosols;
Dr. Kaihui Zhao
Dr. Jinhui Gao
Dr. Yonghua Wu
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Atmosphere is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- ozone pollution meteorology
- ozone pollution control measures and policies
- ozone source apportionment
- ozone pollution modeling
- ozone precursors sensitive
- observations of ozone and its precursors
Planned Papers
The below list represents only planned manuscripts. Some of these manuscripts have not been received by the Editorial Office yet. Papers submitted to MDPI journals are subject to peer-review.
Abstract: The unprecedented reductions in anthropogenic emissions over the COVID-19 lockdowns are utilised to investigate the response of ozone (O3) concentrations to changes in its precursors across various UK sites. Ozone, Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) and NOx (NO+NO2) data were obtained for a 3-year period encompassing the pandemic period (Jan 2019 – Dec 2021), as well as a pre-pandemic year (2017), to better understand the contribution of precursor emissions to O3 fluctuations. Compared with pre-lockdown levels, NO and NO2 declined by up to 63% and 42%, respectively over the lockdown periods, with the most significant changes in pollutant concentrations recorded across the urban traffic sites. O3 levels correspondingly increased by up to 30%, consistent with decreases in the [NO]/[NO2] ratio for O3 concentration response. Analysis of the response of O3 to the NOx reductions suggests that urban traffic, suburban background and suburban industrial sites operate under VOC-limited regimes, whilst urban background, urban industrial and rural background sites are NOx-limited. This is in agreement with the [VOC]/[NOx] ratios determined for the London Marylebone Road (LMR; urban traffic) site and the Chilbolton Observatory (CO; rural background) site, which produce values below and above 8, respectively. Conversely, [VOC]/[NOx] ratios for the London Eltham (LE; suburban background) site indicate NOx-sensitivity which may suggest the [VOC]/[NOx] indicator of O3 concentration response may have a slight NOx-sensitive bias. Further O3 concentration response indicators were also investigated to determine their relevance and accuracy in identifying O3-NOx-VOC relationships across UK sites. It is suggested that, whilst the results obtained via utilisation of these metrics would suggest a shift in photochemical regime, it is likely that variation in O3 during this period is driven by shifts in oxidant (OX; NO2 + O3) equilibrium as a result of decreasing NO2.