Asian anthropogenic emissions and decadal trends in springtime tropospheric ozone over Japan: 1998–2007

Abstract

We examine springtime ozone trends at nine remote locations in Japan during the last decade. The observed decadal ozone trends are relatively small at surface sites but are substantially larger at a mountainous site. We use a regional chemistry‐transport model to explore the observed changes and how changes in Asian anthropogenic emissions have contributed to the observed increasing trends. The model with yearly‐dependent regional emissions successfully reproduces the levels, variability, and interannual variations of ozone at all the surface sites. It predicts increasing trends at the mountainous site, suggesting that increasing Asian anthropogenic emissions account for about half the observed increase. However, the discrepancy between the observation and model results after 2003 (the time of largest emission increase) suggests significant underestimation of the actual growth of the Asian anthropogenic emissions and/or incompleteness in the modeling of pollution export from continental Asia.