Background ozone in the southern Europe and Mediterranean area: influence of the transport processes.

The troposphere is subject to continuous inputs, production and removal processes of ozone and its precursors from natural processes and human activities acting together within a very complex system. In order to assess the behaviour of background ozone in the Mediterranean area, a description of trends, seasonal and diurnal behaviours of free tropospheric ozone is provided. In the Mediterranean area and southern Europe the background tropospheric ozone concentration appears significantly affected by three main air mass transport processes: (i) transport of polluted air masses on regional and long-range scales, (ii) downward transport of stratospheric air masses, and (iii) transport of mineral dust from the Sahara desert. In this review of the literature of the last two decades, we present an overview of these phenomena, mainly monitored at high baseline mountain stations representative of background atmospheric conditions.