EGU23-2959
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-2959
EGU General Assembly 2023
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Global-scale reductions in free tropospheric ozone in 2020-2022 associated with decreased pollution due to COVID-19 and impact on trends

Jerry Ziemke1, Natalya Kramarova2, Stacey Frith3, and Liang-Kang Huang3
Jerry Ziemke et al.
  • 1Code 614, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States of America (jerald.r.ziemke@nasa.gov) and GESTAR II / MSU
  • 2Code 614, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States of America (natalya.a.kramarova@nasa.gov)
  • 3Science Systems and Applications Inc. (SSAI), Lanham, Maryland, USA (liang-kang.huang@ssaihq.com)

NASA satellite measurements show that ozone reductions throughout the Northern Hemisphere (NH) free troposphere reported for spring-summer 2020 during the COronaVIrus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic have occurred again in spring-summer 2021.  The satellite measurements show that tropospheric column ozone (TCO) (mostly representative of the free troposphere) for 20oN-60oN during spring-summer for both 2020 and 2021 averaged ~3 Dobson Units (DU) (or ~7-8%) below normal.  These ozone reductions in 2020 and 2021 were the lowest over the 2005-2021 record.  We also include satellite measurements of tropospheric NO2 that exhibit reductions of ~10-20% in the NH in early spring-to-summer 2020 and 2021, suggesting that reduced pollution was the main cause for the low anomalies in NH TCO in 2020 and 2021.  Reductions of TCO ~2 DU (7 %) are also measured in the Southern Hemisphere in austral summer but are not associated with reduced NO2.  We also extend our analyses to show that year 2022 spring-summer anomalies in NH tropospheric NO2 and free tropospheric ozone from the satellite measurements still remained below pre-COVID levels.

 

How to cite: Ziemke, J., Kramarova, N., Frith, S., and Huang, L.-K.: Global-scale reductions in free tropospheric ozone in 2020-2022 associated with decreased pollution due to COVID-19 and impact on trends, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 24–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-2959, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-2959, 2023.

Supplementary materials

Supplementary material file