Understanding Coastal Ozone Pollution through Atmospheric Soundings and Mobile Measurements

One of the major difficulties for the modeling and satellite communities is the validation of O₃ levels in sharp coastal transition regions within metropolitan areas. Land-water gradients of ozone as well as its precursors can be significant due to differences in emissions, land use, surface deposition, boundary layer height, and mesoscale wind patterns. The Ozone Water-Land Environmental Transition Study (OWLETS-2) was a follow-on field campaign spearheaded by NASA GSFC and LaRC’s Tropospheric Ozone Lidar Network (TOLnet) conducted in the summer of 2018 within the Upper Chesapeake region to better characterize spatial and vertical distribution of various pollutants across the coastal boundary. Supporting this campaign, forty ozonesondes were simultaneously launched directly in the marine environment on Hart Miller Island (HMI) and on two land sites: both the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) and Howard University – Beltsville (HUBV). In addition, Personal Ozone Monitors (POMs) — small sensors — were deployed in a variety of environments — car, boat, and drone, to name a few —to quantify ozone across fine spatial and temporal thresholds. The purpose of these measurements is multifaceted: to provide both ozone pollution information to coastal metropolitan communities and validation to satellite, modeling, and forecasting communities, especially in current and future satellite endeavors such as TROPOMI and TEMPO.