Prolonged stratospheric ozone loss in the 1995–96 Arctic winter

Rex, Markus; Harris, Neil; Gathen, Peter von der; Lehmann, Ralph; Braathen, Geir; Reimer, E.; Beck, Alexander; Chipperfield, Martyn P.; Alfier, R.; Allaart, Marc; O’Connor, Fiona M.; Dier, H.; Dorokhov, V.; Fast, H.; Gil, Manuel; Kyrö, E.; Lityńska, Z.; Mikkelsen, I. S.; Molyneux, Mike G.; Nakane, Hideaki; Notholt, Justus; Rummukainen, Markku; Viatte, P.; Wenger, John C.

doi:10.1038/39849

Cited by 214 publications

(117 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Salawitch et al, 1993;Rex et al, 1997). Evidence of denitrification has been found in the Arctic and Antarctic from in situ and remote sensing observations (Fahey et al, 1990;Solomon, 1999;Waibel et al, 1999;Kondo et al, 2000;Santee et al, 2000;Manney et al, 2011).…”

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confidence: 99%

Denitrification, dehydration and ozone loss during the 2015/2016 Arctic winter

et al. 2017

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Denitrification, dehydration and ozone loss during the 2015/2016 Arctic winter

et al. 2017

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“…For Match approaches based on ozonesondes and other in situ observations, measurement times and/or locations are often specifically targeted to sample previously observed air masses. The technique has been refined, characterized, and applied to the quantification of ozone loss in many Arctic winters (e.g., Rex et al, 1997Rex et al, , 1998Rex et al, , 1999Harris et al, 2002;Lehmann et al, 2005) and in the Antarctic (e.g., Frieler et al, 2006;Schofield et al, 2015). The approach has also been applied to observations from spaceborne solar occultation sounders (e.g., Sasano et al, 2000;Terao et al, 2002Terao et al, , 2012Hoppel et al, 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Match-based approach to the estimation of polar stratospheric ozone loss using Aura Microwave Limb Sounder observations

2015

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Abstract. The well-established "Match" approach to quantifying chemical destruction of ozone in the polar lower stratosphere is applied to ozone observations from the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) on NASA's Aura spacecraft. Quantification of ozone loss requires distinguishing transport-and chemically induced changes in ozone abundance. This is accomplished in the Match approach by examining cases where trajectories indicate that the same air mass has been observed on multiple occasions. The method was pioneered using ozonesonde observations, for which hundreds of matched ozone observations per winter are typically available. The dense coverage of the MLS measurements, particularly at polar latitudes, allows matches to be made to thousands of observations each day. This study is enabled by recently developed MLS Lagrangian trajectory diagnostic (LTD) support products. Sensitivity studies indicate that the largest influence on the ozone loss estimates are the value of potential vorticity (PV) used to define the edge of the polar vortex (within which matched observations must lie) and the degree to which the PV of an air mass is allowed to vary between matched observations. Applying Match calculations to MLS observations of nitrous oxide, a long-lived tracer whose expected rate of change is negligible on the weekly to monthly timescales considered here, enables quantification of the impact of transport errors on the Match-based ozone loss estimates. Our loss estimates are generally in agreement with previous estimates for selected Arctic winters, though indicating smaller losses than many other studies. Arctic ozone losses are greatest during the 2010/11 winter, as seen in prior studies, with 2.0 ppmv (parts per million by volume) loss estimated at 450 K potential temperature ( ∼ 18 km altitude).As expected, Antarctic winter ozone losses are consistently greater than those for the Arctic, with less interannual variability (e.g., ranging between 2.3 and 3.0 ppmv at 450 K). This study exemplifies the insights into atmospheric processes that can be obtained by applying the Match methodology to a densely sampled observation record such as that from Aura MLS.

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“…The GOME data seem to suggest that dynamically induced additional chlorine activation is possible, but only if the active chlorine has decreased from its maximum concentration. Even though temperatures started to increase rapidly after 6 March, OClO levels showed a rather slow decrease in accordance with the continued chemical ozone losses observed until two weeks after the rise above the PSC formation temperature (Rex et al 1997). Large-scale denitri cation (due to sedimentation of PSC particles) removed the sources of NO x , considerably slowing down the deactivation of active chlorine into ClONO 2 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 60%

“…Despite the hemispheric difference in ozone distribution, i.e. greater winter/spring ozone maxima, larger natural variability in ozone, and higher stratospheric temperatures in the northern hemispheric winters, substantial chemical ozone losses, mainly con ned to the lower stratosphere, were unequivocally identi ed in the Arctic vortex from recent ground-based and ozone-sonde data (Braathen et al 1994;Larsen et al 1994;Donovan et al 1995Donovan et al , 1996Donovan et al , 1997von der Gathen et al 1995;Rex et al 1997Rex et al , 1998Knudsen et al 1998;Sinnhuber et al 1998), airborne observations , and satellite measurements (Manney et al 1994(Manney et al , 1995(Manney et al , 1996a(Manney et al , 1996b(Manney et al , 1997Müller et al 1996Müller et al , 1997aMüller et al , 1997bMüller et al , 1999. The rst observational evidence for chemical ozone depletion in the Arctic was obtained in 1988/89 and subsequent winters (Hofmann et al 1989;Prof tt et al 1990;Schoeberl et al 1990).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Arctic winter of 1995/96 has attracted much attention because it was a winter with severe accumulated chemical ozone depletion observed inside the vortex (Manney et al 1996a;Donovan et al 1996). From ozone-sonde measurements, a chemical loss of 64% was deduced by Rex et al (1997) in the stratospheric layer bounded by the 470 K isentropic surface (a height of 19-20 km) by the end of March and, from the Halogen Occultation Experiment (HALOE), an accumulated chemical loss of about one third was found (Müller et al 1997a) in the column amount between the 350 and 550 K isentropic surfaces (12-21 km) by early April. It is well known that variations in total ozone are also caused by transport related to wave activity (Petzoldt et al 1994;Orsolini et al 1998;Chipper eld and Jones 1999).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The cold Arctic winter 1995/96 as observed by GOME and HALOE: Tropospheric wave activity and chemical ozone loss

Weber

Eichmann

Wittrock

et al. 2002

Quart J Royal Meteoro Soc

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SUMMARYThe Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment aboard the European Remote Sensing Satellite ERS-2 was the only satellite instrument measuring total ozone on a near-global scale during the extremely cold Arctic winter 1995/96. Extremely low total ozone was observed within the Arctic vortex during February and March. The lowest value in this winter was 178 DU (Dobson units) over Greenland on 19 February, which was about 160 DU below the February Arctic vortex mean of total ozone. Although severe chemical ozone destruction occurred in late winter 1995/96, the extremely low values in total ozone observed after the middle of February were, in all cases, related to mini-hole events, where large horizontal divergent transport of ozone from the lower-stratospheric layer above a high tropopause rapidly reduced the total column in a localized region. The observed total-ozone minima were located near the vortex edge and in the region of minimum lower-stratospheric temperatures that were, in selected cases, suf ciently low for the formation of polar stratospheric ice clouds (PSC type II) below 188 K at the isentropic level of 475 K. Coincident ozone pro le observations in early March from the Halogen Occultation Experiment on the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite indicate that the strong chemical ozone loss was mainly con ned to the polar vortex region, and that the extremely low total-ozone values below 250 DU were mainly caused by short-term reversible dynamical reductions superimposed upon chemical ozone loss occurring on longer timescales. Enhanced OClO and chlorine activation, due to strong tropospheric wave activity associated with an ozone mini-hole event, was only observed in early March following a stratospheric temperature drop below the ice frost point. In general, however, the observation of very low total ozone in mini-hole events does not necessarily point to signi cant additional chemical depletion.

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Prolonged stratospheric ozone loss in the 1995–96 Arctic winter

Cited by 214 publications

References 24 publications

Denitrification, dehydration and ozone loss during the 2015/2016 Arctic winter

Denitrification, dehydration and ozone loss during the 2015/2016 Arctic winter

A Match-based approach to the estimation of polar stratospheric ozone loss using Aura Microwave Limb Sounder observations

The cold Arctic winter 1995/96 as observed by GOME and HALOE: Tropospheric wave activity and chemical ozone loss

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