IGAC’s Tropospheric Ozone Assessment Report (TOAR) is being published as a series of papers in the peer-reviewed, open-access journal, Elementa:  Science of the Anthropocene.   The papers are appearing in a Special Feature of Elementa as they are accepted for publication, with the latest paper, TOAR-Climate available this month:

Previous assessments of tropospheric ozone and its importance as a greenhouse gas have primarily focused on the processes that control ozone on the regional and global scale. In contrast, TOAR-Climate (Gaudel et al., 2018) assesses tropospheric ozone’s observed global distribution and trends from the mid-1970s to 2016, with the goal of providing a wide range of in situ and remotely sensed ozone observations for quantifying the tropospheric ozone burden and to evaluate the global atmospheric chemistry models that estimate ozone’s present and future radiative forcing.  The analyses utilize TOAR’s unique Surface Ozone Database as well as free tropospheric ozone observations collected from ozonesondes, commercial aircraft and ground-based remote sensing instruments.  The ozone distribution and trends are presented regionally, and the paper concludes with the first intercomparison of the global tropospheric ozone burden, as measured by multiple satellite instruments.

Gaudel, A, et al. 2018. Tropospheric Ozone Assessment Report: Present-day distribution and trends of tropospheric ozone relevant to climate and global atmospheric chemistry model evaluation. Elem Sci Anth, 6: 39. DOI: https://www.elementascience.org/articles/10.1525/elementa.291/