A look back at the 2023 ozone season

“After unusually bad air quality in June, the region settled into a more typical ozone season,” according to Doug Norsby, MARC air quality senior planner. “We had a final blast of heat in late August that brought a couple days of poor air quality, but from Labor Day to the end of the season we maintained the ozone air quality standard.”

The federal Air Quality Maintenance Area for the Greater Kansas City region includes Wyandotte and Johnson counties in Kansas and Clay, Platte and Jackson counties in Missouri. From March 1 through Oct. 31, MARC’s Air Quality program issued 14 ozone alerts and regional monitors recorded 16 days with eight-hour ozone concentrations exceeding the 70 part-per-billion (ppb) standard. MARC also recorded more yellow (moderate) days at 87 in 2023, compared with 61 yellow days in 2022 and 46 in 2021.

Chris Brame, deputy operations manager with the ozone forecasting partner Weather or Not, shared data from the 2023 ozone season at the MARC Air Quality Forum on Nov. 14. The full report is available on the MARC website.

Kansas City region ozone season news

• Ozone season is here
• It’s an early (and rough) start to ozone season
• Ozone pollution: How did we do in 2022?

Visit AirQKC.org to learn more about air quality and ways to keep the air clean.