Dear TOAR-II community,
our dear colleague Yugo Kanaya from Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), Yokohama, Kanagawa 2360001, in Japan, has a publication of his work to announce.
Here is a short summary of his paper:
Observational ozone data over the global oceans and polar regions: The TOAR-II Oceans data set version 2024
Studying tropospheric ozone in remote regions like the open oceans and polar areas is essential to understanding its role as a global climate forcer and regulator of atmospheric oxidative capacity. Oceanic and polar regions offer insights into photochemical and depositional processes that affect ozone concentrations and variability, complementing land-based data. However, comprehensive observational data from these regions have been limited.
This study presents the first extensive dataset of ozone measurements over oceans and polar regions, consisting of 77 ship/buoy-based observations and 48 aircraft campaigns. The dataset includes over 630,000 ozone measurements from 1977 to 2022 at altitudes from the surface up to 5000 m, focusing on the lowest 2000 m. These datasets cover 11 defined oceanic and polar regions, enabling analyses of spatial and temporal trends.
The ship-, buoy-, and aircraft-based data are supplemented by ozonesonde data from 29 launch sites and measurements from 21 non-polar and 17 polar ground stations. The data were filtered using the HYSPLIT model to focus on air masses that traveled over oceans for at least 72 hours, verified with Radon measurements. These data showed flat diurnal patterns at high latitudes and daytime decreases (11–16%) at lower latitudes, confirming the robustness of data collection and processing.
This dataset will enhance the TOAR-II data collection by complementing land-based measurements for a global assessment of tropospheric ozone. The data is publicly available at https://www.jamstec.go.jp/egcr/e/atmos/observation/toar2oceansdata/index.html.
To improve coverage, the TOAR-II Oceans Working Group (Oceans WG) was formed to collect comprehensive ship-, buoy-, and aircraft-based data. Earlier studies focused on single campaigns or national datasets, but the new effort aims for broader global coverage by integrating data from multiple nations and research groups through the IGAC framework of Future Earth’s global research network.
To the publication:
https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2024-566/
Best regards,
The TOAR database team at the Jülich Supercomputing Center
Image: results by Yugo Kanaya
