Tropospheric chemistry over the lower Great Plains of the United States 1. Meteorology

Convective clouds and thunderstorms inject planetary boundary layer air with high concentrations of ozone (O₃) and O₃ precursors into the free troposphere. By altering the chemistry and radiative balance of the upper troposphere, these local actions can have global consequences. In order to extrapolate from individual observations to general trends we have devised a method to identify weather patterns conducive to convection in the southern or lower Great Plains in early summer and applied this method to meteorological and chemical data from a series of research flights carried out in June 1985. -from Authors