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Ground-Based Reactive Gas Observations Within the Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) Network

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Handbook of Air Quality and Climate Change

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Abstract

This chapter summarizes the surface-based WMO-GAW reactive gas measurement network; describes the currently adopted GAW techniques for nitrogen oxides (NOx), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and surface ozone (O3); and presents brief summaries of recent GAW observations of these gases. Within GAW, there are currently nine sites performing continuous in situ measurements of nitrogen oxides using the recommended method of ozone chemiluminescence detection and NO2 photolytic conversion to NO. These sites, which are mostly in Europe except one station in Cape Verde, span a range of environmental conditions from the pristine marine background and free troposphere, to continental background, to continental air. Similarly, online continuous VOC measurements by gas chromatography (GC) are reported from 16 stations in 13 countries, mostly in Europe, with additional online PTR-MS measurements performed in Finland. Additional to these online measurements, flask measurements of VOCs are available within a globally distributed network of 29 stations in 22 countries for light alkanes (glass flasks) and for ~50 VOCs from 15 stations in 5 countries, mostly in Europe (steel flasks). The GAW ozone observation network is extensive and has continued to be an important resource for studies of tropospheric ozone’s global distribution, trends, and impact. An analysis within the framework of the Tropospheric Ozone Assessment Report (TOAR) of several mountaintop sites in remote areas of the Northern Hemisphere (most affiliated with GAW), updated for this chapter, shows that lower tropospheric ozone has generally increased since the 1970s and 1980s. The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) project, which provides regular estimates of global-scale premature death and disability including from poor air quality, fuses global ozone observations from the TOAR Database with output from several global models to calculate ozone exposure maps, an endeavor made possible by GAW observations.

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the EBAS data infrastructure at NILU (www.ebas.nilu.no) for hosting the observational data. We would also like to thank the GAW framework and the data originators: the Swiss National Air Quality Monitoring Network NABEL (FOEN/Empa) and Martin Steinbacher for providing data from the JFJ, RIG, and PAY stations; Dagmar Kubistin, Anja Claude, Christian Plass-Dülmer, Stefan Gilge, and Robert Holla from the Meteorological Observatory Hohenpeissenberg for the HPB data; Ronald Spoor and Mirian Wietses from the Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu (RIVM) for the KMN data; Jgor Arduini and Michela Maione from the Institute for Atmospheric Science and Climate – National Research Council of Italy (CNR-ISAC) – CAMM Monte Cimone for the CMN data; Karri Saarnio, Hannele Hakola, Heidi Hellén, Timo Anttila, and Matti Monto from the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) for the PAL data; and Simone Andersen and James Lee from the University of York for the CVO data. In addition, we thank Martin Steinbacher, Detlev Helmig, Kjetil Tørseth, and Paul Young of the WMO-GAW Reactive Gases Scientific Advisory Group and Sverre Solberg for helpful comments on this chapter. O. R. Cooper was supported by the NOAA Cooperative Agreement with CIRES, NA17OAR4320101. I. J. Simpson was supported by NASA, grant # NNX16AK04G.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Wolfson Atmospheric Chemistry Laboratories, University of York, York, UK

    Lucy J. Carpenter

  2. Department of Chemistry, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA

    Isobel J. Simpson

  3. Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

    Owen R. Cooper

  4. NOAA Chemical Sciences Laboratory, Boulder, CO, USA

    Owen R. Cooper

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  1. Lucy J. Carpenter
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Correspondence to Lucy J. Carpenter .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. National Institute for Environmental Studies, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan

    Hajime Akimoto

  2. National Institute for Environmental Studies, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan

    Hiroshi Tanimoto

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Carpenter, L.J., Simpson, I.J., Cooper, O.R. (2023). Ground-Based Reactive Gas Observations Within the Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) Network. In: Akimoto, H., Tanimoto, H. (eds) Handbook of Air Quality and Climate Change. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-2760-9_8

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