Seasonal changes in surface ozone over South Korea

Recently, the surface ozone concentration in the Korean peninsula has been increasing more rapidly than in the past, and seasonal changes are appearing such as increases in the number of ozone alerts in springtime. We examined changes in the timing of annual maximum South Korean O₃ levels by fitting a sine function to data from 54 air-quality monitoring sites over a 10-year period (2005–2014). The analytical results show that the date of maximum ozone concentration at 23 points in the last 10 years has been advanced by about 2.1 days per year (E-sites), while the remaining 31 points have been delayed by about 2.5 days per year (L-sites). We attribute these differences to seasonal O₃ changes: E-sites show a larger increase in O₃ level in March–April (MA) than in June–July (JJ), while L-sites show a larger increase in JJ than in MA. Furthermore, these shifts are significantly larger in magnitude than those reported for Europe and North America. We also examined one possible reason for these seasonal differences: the relationship between O₃ and precursors such as NO₂ and CO. E-sites showed a rapid decrease in NO₂ (NO) concentration in MA over the last decade. As a result, the ozone concentration at E-sites seems to have increased due to the absence of ozone destruction by NOx titration in early spring. In L-Sites, the concentrations of ozone precursors such as NO₂ and CO in JJ showed a smaller decrease than those at other sites. Therefore, in L-sites, relatively large amounts of ozone precursors were distributed in JJ, implying that more ozone was generated. We suggest that shifts in the South Korean O₃ seasonal cycle are due to changes in early spring and summer NO₂ (NO) and CO levels; this should be tested further by modeling studies.