Introduction

Before continuing on to read about my project, please read this letter from Doug Degenstein.

For many decades, scientists have been noticing a major increase of ozone in the troposphere, which is harmful to human health. Natural ground-level ozone is released by plants and soil, also small amounts of stratospheric ozone occasionally settle down to the Earth's surface. But the amount of ozone that is naturally produced at ground level is not enough to be considered a health threat to humans or the environment. So the reason for the increase of ozone in the troposphere is probably due to the byproducts of certain human activities, which include automobiles and industry.

The goal of this project is to use OSIRIS and TOMS ozone data to find those areas on the Earth, where the concentration of tropospheric ozone is systematically large. This is done by subtracting OSIRIS stratospheric ozone maps from TOMS total ozone maps.

The idea of this project came to me during a science class. At the time, we were discussing various air-pollutants, and I thought: Why not do a science fair project about pollution? So I did some research on tropospheric pollution and found that tropospheric ozone is not as good as most of us tend to think about the ozone in general (i.e. the gas that saves us from UV radiation), but a poison for humans and the environment. Later I visited the University of Saskatchewan (Saskatoon, Canada) and learned about the OSIRIS instrument and it's ozone product. As I was told by the Canadian OSIRIS Team members, OSIRIS ozone data are unique, because OSIRIS is the first instrument in the world that allows one to create global maps of stratospheric ozone every second day. By using the combination of OSIRIS and TOMS ozone data, one can produce global maps of tropospheric ozone. I was also told that if I decided to do this as my science fair project, it would be helpful to the Canadian OSIRIS Team, who just do not have enough manpower at the moment to do everything they would like to with the OSIRIS ozone data.

 

 

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