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This is Trent Schindler from NASA's
Scientific Visualization Studio.

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Ozone in the upper part of the atmosphere--the stratosphere--is a good thing.

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It absorbs ultraviolet radiation from the Sun, which can cause skin cancer.

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But in the lower part of the atmosphere--the troposphere--

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ozone is a pollutant that can create respiratory problems.

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So monitoring tropospheric ozone is important for mitigating its effects.

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But sometimes natural ozone from the stratosphere can

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make its way to the troposphere,
confusing monitoring efforts.

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One of these events is what I'm visualizing here.

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In April 2012, an area of fast moving, low pressure caused ozone-rich stratospheric air to descend,

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folding into tropospheric air near the ground.

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Winds pushed it in all directions,

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bringing stratospheric ozone to the ground in the southwest.

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You can see this as a curtain of swirling air

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reaching to the ground in this visualization.

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The air is color-coded by altitude, blue at 10 kilometers and red at sea level.

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Atmospheric scientists at NASA's Goddard
Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland,

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set out to see if the GEOS-5
chemistry climate model could replicate

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the intrusion at 25 kilometer resolution.

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Indeed, the model could replicate

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small-scale features, including
finger-like filaments within the apron

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of air that descended over Colorado.

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To communicate the implications of this result most effectively to non-scientists,

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we created a volumetric visualization that replaced numerical data with animation.

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By making visible events that would otherwise have
remained invisible to those without

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expertise and training, the animation
allows policymakers in the public to

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immediately comprehend the nature of the
problem and hopefully make more informed

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decisions in addressing it.