Review of the NARSTO Draft Report: An Assessment of Tropospheric Ozone Pollution--A North American Perspective (2000)

On January 20, 1999, Dr. George M. Hidy (a NARSTO representative) posed a set of specific questions to the NRC committee. The questions, and the committee's responses, are set out below. Some of the issues have been addressed in previous sections.

• Is the NARSTO assessment a concise, scientifically supported narrative about the current state of tropospheric ozone knowledge, and its significance for environmental management in the next decade ?

  The report provides a good discussion of selected, important aspects of the current state of tropospheric ozone knowledge. However, there is little or no discussion of how this scientific information can be used in environmental management.

• Have the authors missed any key points that would make a difference in ozone-management strategies?

  Yes, these have been discussed in Chapter 3.

• Does the presentation of the assessment accomplish its goal as a readable, effective communication to its multinational, diverse audience?

  No, the document is difficult to read and, in its present form, is not addressed to a “nonexpert” community. Also, the document is not as multinational in its perspective as it could be.

• Would the report be more effective with a closing conclusions chapter?

• Yes, such a chapter would need to point to a plan of action and to resource needs (see Chapter 3 of this report).

• Does the report need a section addressing the needs for key future studies to fill knowledge gaps, which reflect the authors' opinion on priorities?

  Yes, without a clear statement of research priorities, the document does not provide adequate guidance to the policy-making community or the funding organizations.

• Internal reviewer comments are included in the draft. Please look at “defers” and “conflicts” and comment on resolution

  Not only the “defers” and “conflicts,” but the “rejected” comments should be considered in terms of how they can be used to guide revisions to the document to make it more policy-relevant.

• Should the abstracts of the critical review papers be included as an appendix to the synthesis report?

  Yes, provided that they are consistent in format.

• Is the planned publication medium in keeping with the need to provide the “image” of an objective, unbiased report to the decision-making community?

  Yes, when perfected, the document should be published as widely as possible. One suggestion would be to use the World Wide Web and establish a discussion forum.

• Will the report reach a wide audience of potentially interested persons without using a journal or conventional publication medium?

  See previous comments.