nEWS SCIENCE Tropospheric ozone research plan set for North America A framework for focusing and coordinating research on the sources, formation, and transport of tropospheric ozone across North America was signed on February 13 by representatives of industry, academia, and state and federal agencies in the United States and Mexico. Modeled, in part, after the cooperative research effort on stratospheric ozone depletion, the North American Research Strategy for Tropospheric Ozone (NARSTO) is a voluntary long-term research program involving regulators and the regulated community. Organizers hope that NARSTO eventually will provide the data to adjust EPA's often criticized ozone regulations and controls. According to lames Vickery of EPA's Atmospheric and Exposure Assessment Laboratory (Research Triangle Park, NC), "By combining the resources of the entire ozone research community and working cooperatively, NARSTO will strengthen the quality of our science." NARSTO grew out of a 1991 National Academy of Sciences report, which concluded that the efforts to lower urban tropospheric ozone levels were "severely hampered" by the lack of a coordinated North American research program. "NARSTO is a pledge by participants to look at their individual research in a holistic way," says Peter Mueller of the Electric Power Research Institute (Palo Alto, CA). "We hope that this will initiate closer ties with researchers in the regulatory community," says George Lauer of the Atlantic Richfield Co. (Los Angeles, CA). By early March, NARSTO had collected 55 signatories to its charter, including the state of New lersey EPA, the Electric Power Research Institute, and individual companies such as Ford Motor Co. NARSTO also received the support of the subcommittee on air quality research in the environment section of the White House's National Science and Technology Council.
Research priorities With the signing of the charter for the North American Research Strategy for Tropospheric Ozone in February, participants will pursue prioritized research goals, including: • Conduct a major review of the state of the science and the available tools for measurements, • Provide NARSTO scientists with on-line data on ozone distribution and trends for North America, • Evaluate the data from and siting of EPA's photochemical assessment monitoring sites, • Improve meteorological modeling, • Improve knowledge of chemical oxidant mechanisms, • Improve estimates of natural and anthropogenic emissions of ozone precursors, and • Compare air quality models.
The subcommittee will coordinate NARSTO's activities with other ozone-related and air quality research. One tangible benefit of the NARSTO-White House partnership, says Daniel Albritton, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Aeronomy Laboratory (Boulder, CO), is the Clinton administration's proposed $8.6 million increase in 1996 funding for NOAA's Health of the Atmosphere program on tropospheric ozone research. Many of the organizational structures in NARSTO's charter, says Vickery, are unique. Rather than being led by a federal agency, NARSTO is governed by an executive assembly and 11 member steering committee drawn from public and private members representing organizations that sponsor research. NARSTO's research agenda will be drawn up by teams grouped around four major themes: emissions sources, monitoring networks and analytical methods, chemical and meteorological modeling, and data analysis and interpretation and assessment. In addition, a planning group will
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balance members' funding with the research agenda and prioritize activities; a separate science advisory council will peer review the overall research strategy. The agenda, says Albritton, will be focused on "policy-relevant" research. "All of the stakeholders are formulating NARSTO's plan." According to Vickery, "As we get to the specifics [of who does what research], we will sign cooperative research and development agreements to formalize activities." NARSTO does not dismantle existing research programs; rather, the effort leads members to compare their internal research programs against an international agenda, says Vickery. EPA, for example, would concentrate on the formation of ozone in urban areas, whereas NOAA would focus on rural locations. Petroleum companies, says Howard Feldman of the American Petroleum Institute, have expertise in air quality modeling. Canada (which is expected to sign the charter) and the United States would continue collaborative research on cross-border transport of ozone and ozone precursors. A NARSTO-initiated multiyear study already is looking at ozone and its precursors in the northeastern United States. According to Mueller, field experiments began in 1994. Many of the NARSTO participants point out that coordinated regional studies such as this will be a major goal of the new organization. Although members' monies and "in-kind" resources will not b e pooled, NARSTO hopes to achieve an approximate 50:50 split between public and private funding, says Vickery. NARSTO issued an initial list of prioritized research topics last November. In the coming months, membership on the various committees and teams will be selected. The next formal meeting is set for September. At that time, Feldman said, "people will start looking to who will be doing what." —ALAN NEWMAN
