Significant impact of the East Asia monsoon on ozone seasonal behavior in the boundary layer of Eastern China and the west Pacific region.

The impact of the East Asia monsoon on the seasonal behavior of O₃ in the boundary layer of Eastern China and the west Pacific region was analyzed for 2004-2006 by means of full-year nested chemical transport model simulations and continuous observational data obtained from three inland mountain sites in central and eastern China and three oceanic sites in the west Pacific region. The basic common features of O₃ seasonal behaviors over all the monitoring sites are the pre- and post-monsoon peaks with a summer trough. Such bimodal seasonal patterns of O₃ are predominant over the region with strong summer monsoon penetration, and become weaker or even disappear outside the monsoon region. The seasonal/geographical distribution of the pre-defined monsoon index indicated that the East Asia summer monsoon is responsible for the bimodal seasonal O₃ pattern, and also partly account for the differences in the O₃ seasonal variations between the inland mountain and oceanic sites. Over the inland mountain sites, the O₃ concentration increased gradually from the beginning of the year, reached a maximum in June, decreased rapidly to the summer valley in July or August, and then peaked in September or October, thereafter decreased gradually again. Over the oceanic sites, O₃ abundance showed a similar increasing trend beginning in January, but then decreased gradually from the end of March, followed by a wide trough with the minimum in July and August and a small peak in October or November. A sensitivity analysis performed by setting China-emission to zero revealed that the chemically produced O₃ from China-emission contributed substantially to the O₃ abundance, particularly the pre- and post-monsoon O₃ peaks, over China mainland. We found that China-emission contributed more than 40% to total boundary layer O₃ during summertime (60-70% in July) and accounted for about 40 ppb of each peak value over the inland region if without considering the effect of the nonlinear chemical productions. In contrast, over the oceanic region in the high monsoon index zone, the contribution of China-emission to total boundary layer O₃ was always less than 20% (<10 ppb), and less than 10% in summer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]