The European regional ozone distribution and its links with the global scale for the years 1992 and 2015

Because of global-scale increases in trace gas emissions, ozone concentrati ons in northern hemisphere may increase over the next decade, driving up oz one concentrations within Europe.:Over this same period, policy actions are anticipated which will reduce the internal European regional-scale ozone P roduction capacity. The overall success of these regional policies will be determined by the resultant of these global- and regional-scale influences. A global three-dimensional Lagrangian chemistry model STOCHEM has been use d to look at the relative magnitudes of these two influences on the Europea n regional ozone distribution under some illustrative emission scenarios up to the year 2015. Substantial reductions in European NOx emissions should bring a significant improvement in ozone air quality, but they may not be e nough to keep future peak ozone levels below internationally accepted envir onmental criteria without action: on the global scale to control emissions of tropospheric ozone precursors: methane, carbon monoxide, NOx and VOCs. ( C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.