Ozone Impacts

Ozone sensitivity analyses were conducted using 3-5 years of historical ozone and meteorological data and a statistical modeling approach known as Tree Structured Regression (TSR). This approach is able to identify and analyze weather patterns most commonly associated with episodes of high ozone. The analysis resulted in the development of sensitivity parameters for the most polluted classes of weather patterns for each city. These parameters provide a first-order estimate of how ozone concentrations (either 8-hour or 1-hour) will respond to a change in local air temperature. They were explicitly calculated for a subset of 20 cities and estimated for others. Ozone sensitivities to changes in temperature are generally larger for higher latitudes and larger cities.

 

Advanced users seeking more detailed information on this and other topics related to the scientific and modeling underpinnings of the MIST software tool should read the detailed model description document that can be downloaded from the MIST website.