Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences
Tuesday, February 15, 2022

Non-local ozone sources create springtime air quality challenge for Las Vegas

Large proportion of ozone pollution coming from outside of the city

View toward the mountains surrounding Las Vegas.
View toward the mountains surrounding Las Vegas.
- Pixabay

A large proportion of spring- and summertime ozone pollution in Las Vegas may be coming from sources outside of the city, including pollution transported across the Pacific Ocean and from wildfires, according to a new study by NOAA and CIRES researchers. The in-depth study of ozone production and transport found that non-local ozone mixed down to the surface, contributing a striking 50-55 parts-per-billion (ppb) to ozone levels in the greater Las Vegas area during spring and early summer. This average amount represents 70-80 percent of the 70 ppb regulatory threshold currently set by the U.S. National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS).

“High background ozone levels in the western U.S. can certainly cause some real difficulties for regulators trying to keep ozone levels below the 70 ppb threshold,” said Andy Langford, a scientist with NOAA’s Chemical Sciences Laboratory and the paper’s lead author. “The NAAQS is set at the same limit across the entire United States and doesn’t account for regional differences in background sources. In the eastern states, the background is much lower and not really an issue.”

Scientists in NOAA’s Chemical Sciences Laboratory, Global Monitoring Laboratory, and Global Systems Laboratory and CIRES co-authored the study, published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

Air quality has improved significantly in the United States over the past two decades, with broad reductions in nitrogen dioxide (NO2), one of the photochemical precursors of ground-level ozone, a pollutant regulated by the EPA. While NO2 (which is also regulated) has declined by approximately 38 percent across the country, corresponding improvements in ozone have not been uniform, with decreases of 25 percent in the Southeast but only 11 percent in the Southwest. 

Weaker ozone reductions in the western states are due partly to population growth and increased emissions from oil and gas operations, but western cities such as Las Vegas are also plagued by high background ozone levels in the late spring and early summer months. This background comes from non-local—and more importantly non-controllable—sources that create a challenge for air quality managers. These sources include stratospheric intrusions, which transport ozone-rich air downward from the stratosphere; Asian pollution transported across the Pacific and often mixed with the stratospheric intrusions; and wildfires. These background sources are what cause surface ozone concentrations to peak at remote locations including the Grand Canyon and Great Basin National Parks in May and June, instead of July and August as is typical at most other U.S. locations.

FAST-LVoS campaign

The FAST-LVoS campaign used lidar, ozonesonde balloons, aircraft, and in situ measurements to map ozone in the lowest 6-8 km of the atmosphere between Las Vegas and Barstow, California.

Andy Langford/NOAA

These new findings come from the FAST-LVOS (Fires, Asian, and Stratospheric Transport–Las Vegas Ozone Study) field study conducted in Las Vegas from May-June 2017 as a follow-up to the first LVOS project, conducted over the same period in 2013. This 6-week campaign used lidar, ozonesonde balloons, aircraft, and in situ measurements to investigate both ozone transported from California near the surface, and that originating from the stratosphere, Asia, or wildfires, and transported aloft. The study also investigated local ozone production from Las Vegas urban emissions. The Las Vegas area is currently designated by the EPA as a marginal nonattainment area for ozone

The FAST-LVOS measurements mapped ozone in the lowest 6-8 km of the atmosphere between Las Vegas and Barstow, California. The measurements revealed persistent layers of high ozone caused by stratospheric air and Asian pollution between 3- 6 km above the surface on more than 75 percent of the study days. The measurements documented examples of this ozone-rich air, which had passed over California and the Sierra Nevada Mountains and been captured by the unusually deep boundary layers that form above the desert Southwest and mixed down to the surface. In some cases, this process alone can cause ground-level ozone to exceed the NAAQS threshold—even when there is little locally generated ozone. Regional wildfire influences were also seen on several days and likely contributed to high surface ozone in Las Vegas on at least one occasion. 

For air quality regulators, the ability to identify stratospheric or Asian pollution ozone events is critical, since the Clean Air Act makes allowance for these “exceptional events” if they can be documented. Several such events occurred during the first LVOS campaign, but none were observed during FAST-LVOS. However, the recent campaign documented many instances when high surface ozone was created by a combination of local pollution and air mixed down from above, making the attribution much less clear cut. There is currently no regulatory mechanism to deal with the higher day-to-day background ozone levels caused by the many smaller transport events occurring in late spring and early summer.

While high background ozone in western states can certainly be a challenge during the spring and early summer, the researchers emphasized that the influence of these transport events (and thus background ozone) diminishes in July and August when local ozone production from urban pollution emissions is at its highest.

“In other words,” Langford said, “high ozone days that exceed the NAAQS later in the summer can’t really be blamed on stratospheric intrusions or Asian pollution.”

This story was adapted from one by the NOAA Chemical Sciences Laboratory.

Contacts

Recent News