Observational Study of Ground-Level Ozone in the Desert Atmosphere.

Abstract

Arid lands such as deserts cover more than 35% of the Earth's land surface. Concerns regarding ground-level O3 pollution have been widely addressed in many regions in China, but the behavior of the O3 cycles in the desert atmosphere remains poorly understood. An 8-year observation was conducted to investigate the long-term temporal O3 variations in the atmosphere of the Taklimakan Desert, western China. The results showed that the diurnal and seasonal variations of O3 were mainly influenced by natural processes such as temperature, leading to a different temporal pattern compared with other Chinese regions under the intensive influence of anthropogenic activities. Moreover, the long-term pattern indicates that there exists decoupling trends of O3 variations between our study site (i.e., decreasing trend) and the developed regions in China (i.e., increasing trend). Knowledge of the temporal O3 patterns could therefore provide crucial insights for future effective O3 control strategies in China.