[h=1]Not just rain: thunderstorms also pour down ozone[/h] [h=3]A finding with implications for climate change and air quality[/h]
January 7, 2015 | A new study in
Geophysical Research Letters offers for the first time unequivocal evidence that large storms move significant amounts of ozone from the stratosphere down to the troposphere, the lowest part of the atmosphere. The finding has implications for global climate because tropospheric ozone is a powerful greenhouse gas as well as a pollutant that affects human health and the environment.
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The authors say that the phenomenon challenges global chemistry climate models, since hundreds of storms like the one observed occur over the United States every summer, adding an as yet undermined quantity of ozone into the troposphere. Further, they say, as storm behavior may change in an evolving climate, it is important to understand and incorporate this process into global chemistry-climate models.
Laura L. Pan, Cameron R. Homeyer, Shawn Honomichl, Brian A. Ridley, Morris Weisman, Mary C. Barth, Johnathan W. Hair, Marta A. Fenn, Carolyn Butler, Glenn S. Diskin, James H. Crawford, Thomas B. Ryerson, Ilana Pollack, Jeff Peischl, and Heidi Huntrieser (2014), Thunderstorms Enhance Tropospheric Ozone by Wrapping and Shedding Stratospheric Air, Geophysical Research Letters, 41, 7785-7790, doi: 10.1002/2014GL061921
