Disentangling the Drivers of the Summertime Ozone‐Temperature Relationship Over the United States

Summertime surface-level ozone (O3 ) is known to vary with temperature, but the relative roles of different processes responsible for causing the O3 -temperature relationship are not well quantified. In this study we use simulations of NASA's Global Modeling Initiative (GMI) chemical transport model (CTM) to isolate and assess the relative impact of atmospheric transport, chemistry, and emissions on O3 variability, events, and its correlation with temperature. Using observations from CASTNet in the contiguous United States, we show that the GMI CTM reproduces the spatiotemporal variability of O3 and the O3 -temperature relationship during the summer. We primarily focus on the total change in O3 due to a change in temperature (d O3 /d T). In regions with strong positive correlations between temperature and O3 such as the Northeast, Great Lakes, and Great Plains, temperature's association with transport primarily drives d O3 /d T with smaller contributions from temperature-dependent chemistry and anthropogenic emissions. There are regions, however, with near-zero correlation between temperature and O3 , and our findings suggest that transport is still an important driver of O3 variability in these regions, albeit not correlated with temperature. Transport is not directly dependent on temperature but rather is linked through an indirect association, and it is therefore important to understand the exact mechanisms that link transport to O3 and how these mechanisms will change in a warming world.