The spatial and temporal characteristics of total ozone in China from 2003 to 2007

With the economic development of China, the augment of chemical emissions gases, such as NMHC, CFCS, CO, NO, NO₂, caused the decrease of the amount of O₃. According to the previous research, the depletion of O₃ would cause the increase of surface ultraviolet radiation, which has a strong negative ecological effect on the biosphere. In the situation, it is very meaningful for us to study the spatial and temporal characteristics of O₃ in China based on remote sensing data. In this paper, we divided China into eight natural geographic regions, which were South China region, Southwest region, Central China region, Sichuan Basin region, Tibetan Plateau region, North China region, Inner Mongolia-Northwest region and Northeast region according to China Natural Geographic Regionalization and some previous research work on ozone in China. The calculation results revealed that: (1) The spatial characteristics of the annual and seasonal ozone in China had obvious differences in latitudinal direction. The spring averaged ozone was the biggest among four seasons, followed by winter, summer, and autumn. (2) The highest of the annual ozone was in Northeast region in eight natural geographic regions, the smallest was Southwest region. The highest value of ozone for four seasons was in Northeast China, and the lowest value occurred in South China region for spring and winter, in Tibetan Plateau region for summer and in Southwest region for autumn. (3) The seasonal and monthly change ranges of total ozone were significant in eight natural geographic regions of China, and most of them presented decreased, which showed that the total ozone in China had a decreasing tendency.