Abstract
Quantification of the magnitude and long-term changes of ozone
concentrations transported into the US is important for effective air
quality policy development. We synthesize multiple published trend
analyses of western US baseline ozone, and show that all results are
consistent with an overall, non-linear change – rapid increase during
the 1980s that slowed in the 1990s, maximized in the mid-2000s, and was
followed by a slow decrease thereafter. This non-linear change accounts
for ~2/3 of the variance in the published linear trend
analyses; we attribute the other 1/3 to unquantified autocorrelation in
the analyzed data sets. Recent systematic changes in baseline ozone at
the US West Coast have been relatively small - the standard deviation of
the 2-year means over the 1990-2017 period is 1.5 ppb. International
efforts to reduce anthropogenic precursor emissions from all northern
mid-latitude sources could possibly reduce baseline ozone
concentrations, thereby improving US ozone air quality.