Tropospheric ozone plays a major role in Earth's atmospheric chemistry processes and also acts as an air pollutant and greenhouse gas. Due to its short lifetime, and dependence on sunlight and precursor emissions from natural and anthropogenic sources, tropospheric ozone's abundance is highly variable in space and time on seasonal, interannual and decadal time-scales. Recent, and sometimes rapid, changes in observed ozone mixing ratios and ozone precursor emissions inspired us to produce this up-to-date overview of tropospheric ozone's global distribution and trends. Much of the text is a synthesis of in situ and remotely sensed ozone observations reported in the peer-reviewed literature, but we also include some new and extended analyses using well-known and referenced datasets to draw connections between ozone trends and distributions in different regions of the world. In addition, we provide a brief evaluation of the accuracy of rural or remote surface ozone trends calculated by three state-of-the-science chemistry-climate models, the tools used by scientists to fill the gaps in our knowledge of global tropospheric ozone distribution and trends.

A series of smog chamber experiments have been conducted in which five cyclic monoterpenes were oxidized by ozone. The evolved secondary aerosol was analyzed by GC-MS and HPLC-MS for nonvolatile polar oxidation products with emphasis on the identification of carboxylic acids. Three classes of compounds were determined at concentration levels corresponding to low percentage molar yields:  i.e. dicarboxylic acids, oxocarboxylic acids, and hydroxyketocarboxylic acids. Carboxylic acids are highly polar and have lower vapor pressures than their corresponding aldehydes and may thus play an important role in secondary organic aerosol formation processes. The most abundant carboxylic acids were the following:  cis-pinic acid AB1 (cis-3-carboxy-2,2-dimethylcyclobutylethanoic acid) from α- and β-pinene; cis-pinonic acid A3 (cis-3-acetyl-2,2-dimethylcyclobutylethanoic acid) and cis-10-hydroxypinonic acid AB6 (cis-2,2-dimethyl-3-hydroxyacetylcyclobutylethanoic acid) from α-pinene and β-pinene; cis-3-caric acid C1 (cis-2,2-dimethyl-1,3-cyclopropyldiethanoic acid), cis-3-caronic acid C3 (2,2-dimethyl-3-(2-oxopropyl)cyclopropanylethanoic acid), and cis-10-hydroxy-3-caronic acid C6 (cis-2,2-dimethyl-3-(hydroxy-2-oxopropyl)cyclopropanylethanoic acid) from 3-carene; cis-sabinic acid S1 (cis-2-carboxy-1-isopropylcyclopropylethanoic acid) from sabinene; limonic acid L1 (3-isopropenylhexanedioic acid), limononic acid L3 (3-isopropenyl-6-oxo-heptanoic acid), 7-hydroxylimononic acid L6 (3-isopropenyl-7-hydroxy-6-oxoheptanoic acid), and 7-hydroxylimononic acid L6‘ (7-hydroxy-3-isopropenyl-6-oxoheptanoic acid) from limonene.

Hydrofluorocarbons, many of which contain a CF(3) group, are one of the major substitutes for the chlorofluorocarbons and halons that are being phased out because they contribute to stratospheric ozone depletion. It is critical to ensure that CF(3) groups do not cause significant ozone depletion. The rate coefficients for the key reactions that determine the efficiency of the CF(3) radical as a catalyst for ozone loss in the stratosphere have been measured and used in a model to calculate the possible depletion of ozone. From these results, it is concluded that the ozone depletion potentials related to the presence of the CF(3) group in hydrofluorocarbons are negligibly small.

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Abstract. The time resolved chemical composition of aerosol particles, formed by the oxidation of alpha-pinene has been investigated by liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC-MS) using negative and positive ionisation methods (ESI(-) and APCI(+)). The experiments were performed at the EUPHORE facility in Valencia (Spain) under various experimental conditions, including dark ozone reactions, photosmog experiments with low NOx mixing ratios and reaction with OH radicals in the absence of NOx (H2O2-photolysis). Particles were sampled on PTFE f ilters at different stages of the reaction and extracted with methanol. The predominant products from alpha-pinene in the particulate phase are cis-pinic acid, cis-pinonic acid and hydroxy-pinonic acid isomers. Another major compound with molecular weight 172 was detected, possibly a hydroxy-carboxylic acid. These major compounds account for 50% to 80% of the identified aerosol products, depending on the time of sampling and type of experiment. In addition, more than 20 different products have been detected and structures have been tentatively assigned based on their molecular weight and responses to the different ionisation modes. The different experiments performed showed that the aerosol formation is mainly caused by the ozonolysis reaction. The highest aerosol yields were observed in the dark ozone experiments, for which also the highest ratios of mass of identified products to the formed aerosol mass were found (30% to 50%, assuming a density of 1 g cm-3).