Upper-layer ozone intrusion promotes wintertime secondary aerosol formation on the ground
Upper-layer ozone (O<sub>3</sub>) intrusion (ULOI) is an important source of surface O<sub>3</sub>, affecting gas pollutants and secondary aerosol formation. However, no robust method has been reported to identify ULOI events based on ground observations and assess their effects on surface atmospheric chemistry. We propose a novel method to identify ULOI events by ranking O<sub>3</sub> concentrations before dawn and evaluate their contributions to ground-level O<sub>3</sub> and aerosol formation across China. Our results show that ULOI events occur at a rate of 22%-74% across China, with higher frequency in eastern and southern coastal regions. ULOI enhances ground-level O<sub>3</sub> by 13-43 ppbv at night and 3-14 ppbv during the day. This increases atmospheric oxidation capacity (AOC) and enhances the contribution of the O<sub>3</sub> oxidation path to sulfate and secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation. This study emphasizes the importance of atmospheric layer interactions and the impact of ULOI events on surface atmospheric chemistry.
Authors
- Markku Kulmala (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3464-7825)
- Y. Liu
- Yuzheng Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4226-7411)
- Jinghe Xie
- Feixue Zheng
- Chenjie Hua
- XiaoLei BAO
- Yuan Qi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7935-5397)
- Federico Bianchi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6155-5531)
- Zhiheng Liao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8373-885X)
- Yusheng Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7899-6560)
- Pengkun Ma
- Z.P. Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-5614-5938)
- Veli Matti Kerminen
- Jingkun Jiang
- Men Xia
- Tuukka Petaja
- Aijun Ding
- Shuli Zhao
- Douglas R Worsnop
- Wei Du
- Jiannong Quan
- Wei Ma
- Xiaoxi Zhao
- Bo Hu
- Xin Chen
Institutions
- University of Helsinki (FI)
- China Meteorological Administration (CN)
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- Nanjing Institute of Technology (CN)
- Bay College (US)
- Helsinki Institute for Information Technology (FI)
- Hebei Chemical and Pharmaceutical College (CN)
- China National Environmental Monitoring Center (CN)
- State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control (CN)
- Institute of Atmospheric Physics (CN)
- Beijing Advanced Sciences and Innovation Center (CN)
- Nanjing University (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- National Science Review
- Published
- 2025-12-27
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwaf593
- Primary Topic
- Atmospheric chemistry and aerosols
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- National Science and Technology Major Project