Using machine learning to unravel chemical and meteorological effects on ground-level ozone: Insights for ozone-climate control strategies

In the context of climate change, various countries/regions across East Asia have witnessed severe ground-level ozone (O3) pollution, which poses potential health risks to the public. The complex relationships between O3 and its drivers, including the precursors and meteorological variables, are not yet fully understood. Revealing the impact of multiple drivers on O3 is crucial for providing evidence-based information for pollution control. In the present study, we evaluated the influence of key chemical-aerosol (e.g., volatile organic compounds, PM2.5, NOx) and meteorological drivers (e.g., air temperature, relative humidity) on ground-level O3 pollution at Tucheng site in New Taipei, Northern Taiwan, using fine-resolution atmospheric composition measurements and machine learning. The developed random forest machine learning models performed well, with 10-fold cross-validation R2 values above 0.867. The results reveal seasonal disparities on chemical and meteorological effects on ground-level O3 between winter and summer. Aggregated SHAP values indicated that chemical (e.g., NOx and VOCs) and aerosol variables (i.e., PM2.5) accounted for 82.4 % of the explained variance in winter O3 predictions and 62.1 % in summer. Meteorological variables (e.g., temperature, relative humidity) contributed the remaining variance, highlighting seasonally shifting sensitivities. Across seasons, temperature, 1,2,3-Trimethylbenzene, NOx, t-2-Butene, and relative humidity were identified as the dominant drivers of ground-level O3 predictions, reflecting their modelled associations with elevated O3 concentrations. The machine learning-based modelling framework developed in this study can be easily adapted to new sampling sites with minor modifications if necessary.