The Influence of Synoptic Weather Conditions on Weekday-weekend Effect of Extreme Ground-level Ozone Events in the Toronto area

• Main Author: Leung, Kinson He Yin
• Other Authors: Gough, William A.
• Language: en_ca
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: Extreme Ground-level Ozone Event; Synoptic Weather Conditions; Weekday-Weekend Effect; Toronto; 0368
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/25757

Ground-level ozone (O3) is a familiar pollutant because it is associated with summer haze and smog alerts. The 2000-2008 weekday-weekend variations of ozone concentration were examined in relation to the Toronto weather conditions. The goal of this work is twofold: (1) To determine whether extreme ozone events were associated with specific weather conditions, (2) To determine whether the weekday-weekend effect of extreme ozone events could be detectable during the nine-year study period. The results show that in the study period, there were totally 313 days having extreme ground-level ozone events with ozone concentration ≥ 80 ppb, which is the current Ontario Ambient Air Quality Criterion for ozone concentration, in the four selected Toronto sites. Additionally, the weather condition mainly associated with these 313 days was the Dry Tropical one. This study also shows the phenomenon of the weekday-weekend effect of extreme ozone events in the past nine years in Toronto.