The Arctic region is rapidly gaining interest and support for scientific studies to help understand and characterize the processes, sources, and chemical composition of the Arctic environment. In order to understand the Arctic climate system and the changes that are occurring, it is imperative to know the behavior and impact of atmospheric constituents. As a secondary pollutant which impacts the oxidation capacity and radiative forcing of the atmosphere, ozone is an imperative species to characterize. Global atmospheric models help to confirm and understand the influence of long-distance transport on local ozone conditions. This analysis highlights the winter season when ozone conditions are not being driven by photochemical influence, and transport is the prevalent means of ozone variation. In order to ensure adequate representation of ozone conditions and source regions, model comparison verifies the ability of models to represent the behavior of ozone at the surface. Ozone mixing ratios observed from Barrow, Alaska and Summit, Greenland, are critical observations to provide fundamental knowledge of the behavior and trends of ground-level ozone in the Arctic. The observed surface ozone and wind data are compared against two different global climate-chemistry models to assess the ability for models to simulate surface ozone in the arctic region. The CCM SOCOL (Modeling tools for studies of Solar Climate Ozone Links) and Community Earth System Model (CESM1) CAM4-chem are compared to observational measurements. Collaboration between modeling and observational community is needed in understanding of the long-range transport contribution to ozone variability in the boundary layer of the Arctic environment. At the same time, observations can help models to fine-tune their transport and trans-boundary mixing schemes to capture observed ozone deviations on seasonal to annual scales.
Air Pollution in the Arctic: Climate, Environment and Societies