An Unprecedented Arctic Ozone Depletion Event During Spring 2020 and Its Impacts Across Europe

Abstract

The response of the ozone column across Europe to the extreme 2020 Arctic ozone depletion was examined by analyzing ground‐based observations at 38 European stations. The ozone decrease at the northernmost site, Ny‐Ålesund (79°N) was about 43% with respect to a climatology of more than 30 years. The magnitude of the decrease declined by about 0.7% deg−1 moving south to reach nearly 15% at 40°N. In addition, it was found that the variations of the ozone column at each of the selected stations in March‐May were similar to those observed at Ny‐Ålesund but with a delay increasing to about 20 days at mid‐latitudes with a gradient of approximately 0.5 days deg−1. The distributions of reconstructed ozone column anomalies over a sector covering a large European area show decreasing ozone that started from the north at the beginning of April 2020 and spread south. Such behavior was shown to be similar to that observed after the Arctic ozone depletion in 2011. Stratospheric dynamical patterns in March–May 2011 and during 2020 suggested that the migration of ozone‐poor air masses from polar areas to the south after the vortex breakup caused the observed ozone responses. A brief survey of the ozone mass mixing ratios at three stratospheric levels showed the exceptional strength of the 2020 episode. Despite the stronger and longer‐lasting Arctic ozone loss in 2020, the analysis in this work indicates a similar ozone response at latitudes below 50°N to both 2011 and 2020 phenomena.

Springtime evolution of stratospheric ozone and circulation patterns over Svalbard archipelago in 2019 and 2020

“…Although the spring 2020 stratospheric temperatures at Ny-Ålesund were above 195 K, chemical ozone depletion occurred in the central part of the polar vortex (Lawrence et al 2020). Ozone-depleted air masses were advected over Ny-Ålesund from the region of its chemical depletion during the displacement of the polar vortex toward Europe (Petkov et al 2023). Furthermore, ozone depletion was significantly enhanced by the strong polar vortex, which serves as a barrier in the transport of ozone from the tropics to the polar regions.…”

“…In 2011, a persistent polar vortex in the stratosphere caused an unusually long cold spell that lasted until the end of March, allowing PSCs to occur continuously for more than 100 days (Manney et al 2011). A strong polar vortex in the spring of 2020 exhibited very similar behaviour to that of 2011, fulfilling the conditions for ozone layer destruction as well (Petkov et al 2023).…”

Characterisation and Field Test of a Simple AvaSpec Array Spectroradiometer for Solar Irradiance Measurements at an Alpine Site

“…These were required as input to the radiative transfer model. In particular, a MkIV Brewer spectrophotometer was used to retrieve ozone [56,57] and nitrogen dioxide [58,59] vertical column densities, and a sun/sky POM-02 photometer was employed to estimate the aerosol optical depth (AOD) and microphysical/optical properties [60,61]. The aerosol properties were retrieved using the inversion algorithm Skyrad pack MRI (Meteorological Research Institute) version 2 [62].…”