On the origin of tropospheric ozone

Abstract

The effects of NO x (NO + NO 2 ) intrusion from the stratosphere on photochemical ozone production in the upper troposphere are investigated. Using the currently accepted reaction rate coefficients, we find that this upper tropospheric ozone source may be significantly larger than the direct injection of ozone from the stratosphere. Many features of the observed tropospheric temporal and spatial ozone distributions appear to be better explained by this upper tropospheric ozone source hypothesis than by either the classical ‘dynamical control’ or ‘photochemical control’ hypotheses. In addition, we find that NO x emissions from high flying subsonic aircraft in the northern hemisphere may cause an ozone increase in the troposphere. The calculated tropospheric ozone increase due to these NO x emissions is not inconsistent with the increases observed by the northern hemispheric ozonesonde stations.