Changes in the Relative Importance of Biogenic Isoprene and Soil NOx Emissions on Ozone Concentrations in Nonattainment Areas of the United States

Abstract

Reductions in anthropogenic emissions have drawn increasing attention to the role of the biosphere in O3 production chemistry in U.S. cities. We report the results of chemical transport model sensitivity simulations exploring the relative impacts of biogenic isoprene and soil nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions on O3 and its temporal variability. We compare scenarios with high and low anthropogenic NOx emissions representing the reductions that have occurred in recent decades. As expected, summertime O3 concentrations become less sensitive to perturbations in biogenic isoprene emissions as anthropogenic NOx emissions decline. However, we demonstrate for the first time that across policy relevant O3 nonattainment areas of the United States, O3 becomes more sensitive to perturbations in soil NOx emissions than to identical perturbations in isoprene emissions. We show that interannual variability in soil NOx emissions may now have larger impacts on interannual O3 variability than isoprene emissions in many areas where the latter would have dominated in the recent past.