Modeling Air Pollution Episodes at a Shoreline Lake Michigan Site

Abstract

There are many atmospheric reactions that attribute to the levels of ozone in the troposphere. To better quantify ozone levels during a high ozone episode at a site, Chiwaukee Prairie, where our group sampled ozone via an Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) in June 2020. I am currently working with a box model on MATLAB that can compute ozone concentration from a defined source region in Chicago, IL. By using historic data sets, information such as HYSPLIT back trajectories, atmospheric profiles from the UAS, and ground-based monitoring data, we can compute how an air parcel produces ozone that arrives at Chiwaukee Prairie on a given day. Modeling ozone concentrations in the troposphere is important to understand how to improve the air quality, making it safer to breathe.