Cache Valley hits record-breaking levels of wintertime ozone

This winter has been particularly cold in Logan and the skies have been unusually clear. This gives the sunlight a chance to reflect off of sitting snow, creating more ozone, which is very harmful to breathe in. 

Utah State University professor Randy Martin teaches about air quality and pollution control.

“Since 2012 or so, there’s been remediation — regulations and scenarios put in place,” Martin said. “They’ve probably helped us out a bit, but we’ve also had very mild winters for most of the last 10 years or so.”

Martin said the conditions of this winter were not unexpected.

“A lot of us in the meteorological, environmental engineering, environmental science community kind of were waiting for this to happen,” Martin said. “Specifically, we hit air that we haven’t really seen in about a decade.”

 According to Martin, Cache Valley can potentially expect another month of bad air quality.

“Even though we’ve put emission reductions in place, we’ve had increases in population,” Martin said. “People are driving more miles on their vehicles, so our potential for sources has, unfortunately, gone up.”

Martin said high wintertime ozone is rare because it usually needs a large amount of sunlight.

“Last week, it was bad enough that we had literally hit the highest ozone — wintertime ozone — that we’ve ever recorded here in Cache Valley,” Martin said. “Even though it’s inverted, we had relatively clear skies, and then we had snow on the ground that reflects the sunlight.”

Martin compared the effect of higher wintertime ozone to the sun reflecting off of the snow when skiing, which makes it easier for the skier to get a sunburn.

“Normally, the air near the ground is warmest so it allows it to convectively mix,” Martin said. “But when it’s cold air at the bottom, just think of it almost like a river — that cold air sinks down and wants to seek the lowest levels here in the valley. And we don’t really have a large enough drain if you will.”

Martin said there are multiple reasons the air quality has been so poor this winter.

“One of them being the fact that we live in a valley, so that doesn’t allow our air pollution to escape very easily,” Martin said. “We get cold stagnant air that allows the inversion to form.”

According to Martin, inversion is when cold air has nowhere to escape because it is trapped below warm air.

“Our main particle of concern in Cache Valley is something we call ammonium nitrate,” Martin said.

Overall, the air quality in Utah is getting better, according to Martin.

“A lot of that has to do with the programs that have been put in place at the local and state level — until this winter,” Martin said. “That doesn’t mean we can just ignore it this year, because it’s affecting your health.”

Martin said even short-term exposure to bad air can affect lung capacity.

“If it’s exposed chronically, over time, it will decrease your lung capacity overall, not just the short term,” Martin said. “Which makes you more susceptible to various disease states as well.”

Martin said air quality can affect many different aspects of health, including an increased risk for reproduction issues, cancer, stroke, depression, Alzheimer’s disease and more.

“Pick your favorite body part, and air pollution can affect it, including mental issues,” Martin said. “We found out that our ammonia in Cache Valley were ammonia-rich, meaning we have excess ammonia.”

Avery Cronyn, a senior at USU and the sustainable transportation manager for Aggie Blue Bikes, said it can be difficult to travel on bikes when the air quality is poor.

“There’s kind of two different types of people,” Cronyn said. “There’s the people who are not biking when the air quality gets bad so that they save their lungs, and then there’s people who are biking when the air quality is bad because they don’t want to contribute to bad air quality.”

Cronyn said driving less is a good way to increase the quality of Cache Valley’s air.

“Cache Valley has a free bus system, that’s a great way to reduce emissions,” Cronyn said. “If you’re driving your own car, avoid idling. Just really idling as little as possible. I know meat consumption is a big contributor to pollutants.”

Cronyn said the quality of air has affected him personally and is a large difference from his hometown in Arizona.

“Seasonal affective disorder has been really strong this year,” Cronyn said. “You can’t go out and do anything, and you can’t see the mountains, you can barely see the sun, the moon.”

According to Cronyn, it is important to educate people on this subject because some don’t realize how dangerous the air quality can be.

“It’s not sustainable,” Cronyn said. “You look at the last five years, and this year is the worst for general air quality, but also PM 2.5, just comes from cars mainly.”

In general, Cronyn encourages people to ride bikes for their transportation whenever possible.

“Annually, bikes save over 238 million gallons of gas per year. That’s something I got from bicyclehistory.net,” Cronyn said. “A University of California Davis study showed that if most people switch their transportation travel to cycling, then it could reduce CO2 emissions 10% and save about $25 trillion.”

Marc Mansfield is a senior environmental modeler and research professor at the Bingham Research Center.

“We have ozone in the winter — high ozone reading in the winter,” Mansfield said in a virtual interview. “That’s incredibly rare. There are only two regions worldwide where that’s known to happen. Here, and then the north up in Wyoming.”

According to Mansfield, wintertime inversions, the pollutants being emitted and snow cover all play a role in the Uinta Basin’s air quality.

“We do have an active oil and gas extraction industry here,” Mansfield said. “It’s pretty clear that the precursors — the ozone precursors — are coming from that industry.”

Mansfield said the high level of ozone is not coming from agricultural sources.

“We figured there may be 50,000 cattle in the Basin,” Mansfield said. “But they mainly emit methane, which is not important in the production of ozone. Ozone is the problem here in Uinta Basin.”

Mansfield said poor air quality has always been an issue.

“You can go back 100 years and see photos of the Salt Lake Valley where there’s a haze. In those days, it was because everyone heating with coal,” Mansfield said. “We are required to follow the stipulations of the Clean Air Act.”

Mansfield recommends that people limit how long their vehicles are left idling.

“The ozone concentrations drop off really quickly indoors,” Mansfield said. “So another thing we do is encourage the susceptible people with respiratory issues to stay indoors to avoid outside exposure during these episodes.” 

Yoshimitsu Chikamoto is an assistant professor in earth system modeling at USU.

“Poor air quality can also be a problem during the summer, not just in the winter,” Chikamoto said in a written response. “My team is looking at how changing climate affects air quality during the summer.”

Chikamoto said Utah is popular for outdoor recreation activities like mountain biking, hiking and outdoor sports.

“The poor air quality during the summer makes these activities riskier for people’s health,” Chikamoto said. “We have found that Northern Utah will experience more unhealthy air days due to a part of climate change.”

Chikamoto said there are different types of pollution, including ozone, carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and tiny particles.

“The main source comes from larger wildfires in the northwestern United States, which then transported smoke toward Northern Utah,” Chikamoto said. “Therefore, improving Utah’s air quality during the summer would require cooperation between multiple states in the western U.S.”