Studying cumulative ozone exposures in Europe during a 7-year period

Ozone is one of the most harmful pollutants in the troposphere. High ozone concentrations can damage plants, animals and humans. The damaging effects depend on the magnitude of a critical level of a special parameter, the cumulative ozone exposure. This is why cumulative ozone exposures must be carefully studied. It is important to determine the relationships between relevant emissions (NOx emissions, human-made VOC emissions, and/or a combination of NOx emissions and human-made VOC emissions) and cumulative ozone exposures. All these issues are discussed in this paper. Meteorological data from seven consecutive years, from 1989 to 1995, have been used in the experiments with different scenarios for varying the emissions (the NOx emissions, the human-made VOC emissions, as well as both the NOx emissions and the human-made VOC emissions). The particular air pollution model used in this study is the Danish Eulerian Model. Several hundred runs with different input data (meteorological data and/or emission data) have been performed. Advanced visualization techniques are used to interpret the large amount of digital data collected in these runs and to show clearly different trends and relationships that are normally hidden behind millions and millions of numbers. The model results were compared with measurements taken at more than 80 stations located in different European countries. The experiments indicate that it is sufficient to carry out computations over 5 consecutive years in order to eliminate the influence of extreme meteorological conditions (very warm or very cold summer months) on the cumulative ozone exposures, while this effect is clearly seen if less than 5 years are used in the experiments. It is shown that the relationship between the emissions (NOx and/or human-made VOC emissions) and the cumulative ozone exposures is in general nonlinear. Finally, it is illustrated that the critical values for ozone exposures are exceeded in most of Europe (in many areas by more than 7 times).