Ozone in the Great Lakes Region

Ozone in Great Lakes Region

In 2021 and 2022 LADCO completed an internal project to summarize the state of the science on ozone formation in the Great Lakes Region. The project culminated in an Ozone Synthesis Report that connected all of the known information on ozone chemistry, source-receptor relationships, and emissions control strategies. The purpose of the project and synthesis report was to provide the LADCO member states with contemporary technical information to support ozone planning decisions pursuant to NAAQS attainment.

LADCO Ozone Synthesis Project

Overarching question: How can the LADCO member states with ozone nonattainment areas most effectively bring these areas into attainment of the 2015 ozone NAAQS?

Overall goal: Provide LADCO member states with the technical information needed to design cost-effective control strategies to reduce ozone concentrations. This goal includes providing information about ozone precursor control measures, and the anticipated ozone impacts from implementation of those control measures.

Approach: Summarize and synthesize results of existing and ongoing studies to address the overarching question. These studies fall into three broad areas:

  • Emissions analyses
  • Modeling analyses
  • Observational analyses

For each project in these three areas, LADCO will review and summarize the project and its results. We will then synthesize the results of all projects in a given area to address the key questions. Finally, we will identify uncertainties, remaining knowledge gaps, and future projects to address these gaps.

LADCO will begin by evaluating and synthesizing the projects that are already complete. As additional projects are finished, we will add information from those studies into the document.

The three areas are described below, including the questions to be addressed within each area and the projects LADCO will rely upon to answer these questions. In the synthesis section that follows, we draw connections between these areas to show how they can be used by the LADCO member states for air quality planning.