Development of fast ozone detectors for measurement of ozone fluxes from ship and airborne platforms

Model calculations show that ocean dry deposition has the potential to reduce surface O3 mixing ratios by several ppb, which is of a magnitude where it can influence human exposure and impact on ecosystems and agricultural crop yields. However, O3 deposition velocities to the ocean are highly uncertain with very poor knowledge of the mechanistic details.

This project deploy an eddy covariance - fast response ozone detector based on the ozone + nitric oxide (NO) chemiluminescence reaction on ship-based and ground-based field campaigns, including at the Tudor Hill Marine Atmospheric Observatory in Bermuda and at the Cape Verde Atmospheric Observatory in the tropical Atlantic ocean. This will allow observations of seasonal O3 flux time series and a better understanding of the mechanisms of oceanic O3 deposition.

The second aim of this project is to build a Cavity-Enhanced UV Absorption O3 instrument based on the newly developed NASA Rapid Ozone Experiment (ROZE). This high precision, fast time response instrument is particularly well suited to aircraft measurements of O3 fluxes (using the eddy covariance technique). The performance of this instrument will be characterisde in the WACL laboratories to demonstrate its suitability for installation on the UK FAAM aircraft. There will be opportunities to deploy the fast aircraft O3 sensor on at least one airborne field campaign once it has been installed on the aircraft.