Vertical concentration gradient of ambient ozone – insight into seven-year continuous measurements at a rural Central European site tall tower

0585421 - ÚI 2025 DE eng A - Abstract
Hůnová, I. - Brabec, Marek - Malý, Marek
Vertical concentration gradient of ambient ozone – insight into seven-year continuous measurements at a rural Central European site tall tower.
EGU General Assembly 2024 Abstracts. Munich: European Geosciences Union, 2024.
[EGU General Assembly 2024. 14.04.2024-19.04.2024, Vienna / Online]
Research Infrastructure: ACTRIS -CZ - 90037
Institutional support: RVO:67985807
https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU24/EGU24-2874.html

The vertical representativeness of ambient air pollutant concentration measurements is addressed rarely though it is a very important aspect influencing the use and correct interpretation of measured values. Presently not much information on the vertical distribution of ambient ozone (O3) from sites representing relatively unpolluted rural areas is available. We explored the daily mean O3 concentrations measured at four heights above the ground (2, 8, 50 and 230 m) at the rural Central European site Košetice in 2015–2021. We aimed to explore in detail the O3 behaviour above the measuring point in close vicinity of the ground. We used the semiparametric GAM (generalised additive model) approach (with complexity or roughness-penalised splines implementation) to analyse the data with sufficient flexibility. Our models for both O3 concentration and O3 gradients used (additive) decomposition into annual trend and seasonality. Our results indicated consistently increasing O3 with increasing height above the ground. The vertical O3 concentration gradient in 2–230 m is not uniform, however, but changes substantially with increasing height and shows by far the highest dynamics near the ground between 2 and 8 m, differing in both the seasonal and annual aspects for all the air columns inspected. Study of O3 concentrations at one site at several different heights above the ground brings useful results complementing ground-based ambient air quality monitoring, provides a deeper insight into the 3D structure of the atmosphere and the pollution, and provides valuable information for environmental studies exploring processes above the ground (Hůnová et al., 2023). Knowledge on vertical distribution of O3 concentrations near ground is for example an important input to ecological and environmental studies associating the air pollution with its impact on birds flying tens or hundred meters above the ground or impacts on tree canopies localised some tens of meters above the ground (Reif et al., 2023).
Permanent Link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0353131