The overall aim of the IOF Pump-Priming project was to develop new international collaborations to demonstrate the potential of a novel approach to understanding atmospheric ozone behaviour, through co-ordinated, parallel measurements.

The objectives were:

1. To develop a new partnership with Mines Douai / Lille, through research staff exchanges and a formal ozone production rate instrument intercomparison exercise.

2. To demonstrate a new concept: simultaneous parallel ozone production measurements, in this case to provide insight into changes in ozone chemistry anticipated from future evolution of forest composition

3. To facilitate future parallel ozone production rate instrument deployments to enable new understanding of atmospheric behaviour, and hence improved air quality policy.

Tropospheric ozone is an important air pollutant, harmful to human health, agricultural crops and vegetation. It is the main precursor to the atmospheric oxidants which initiate the degradation of most reactive gases emitted to the atmosphere, and is an important greenhouse gas in its own right. As a consequence of this central role in atmospheric chemistry and air pollution, the capacity to understand, predict and manage tropospheric ozone levels is a key goal for atmospheric science research. This goal is hard to achieve, as ozone is a secondary pollutant, formed in the atmosphere from the complex oxidation of VOCs in the presence of NOx and sunlight, and a combination of in situ chemical processes, deposition and transport govern ozone levels. Uncertainties in all of these factors affect the accuracy of numerical models used to predict current and future ozone levels, and so hinder development of optimal air quality policies to mitigate ozone exposure. The timescale of ozone chemistry leads to it being a transboundary pollutant, requiring international collaboration for both scientific understanding and the development of effective ozone pollution mitigation policies.