Determining the main atmospheric factor on ozone concentrations

This paper presents techniques for studying the influence of the atmospheric variables for the explanation of ozone concentrations. A methodology is described for separating the different time scale components in time series of ozone, namely, the global-term component which describes the long and seasonal variations, and the synoptic-scale component. We prove that the decomposition of the time series of ozone and other atmospheric variables is essential for the analysis. The results indicate that solar radiation is the only main factor between all the atmospheric variables for the global and the synoptic-scale component of the ozone time series. Most of the total variance of ozone can be explained by the atmospheric variables, which makes possible the precise estimation of human effect on ozone. In case the solar radiation data are not available, lagged temperature can be used as a supplement of solar radiation.