Identification

Title

Impact of mesospheric intrusions on ozone-tracer relations in the stratospheric polar vortex

Abstract

Ozone-tracer relations are used to quantify chemical ozone loss in the polar vortices. The underlying assumptions for the application of this technique were extensively discussed in recent years. However, the impact intrusions of mesospheric air into the polar stratosphere have on estimates of chemical ozone loss based on the ozone-tracer technique has not hitherto been studied. Here, we revisit observations of an intrusion of mesospheric air down to altitudes of ∼25 km (∼600 K potential temperature) in the Arctic vortex in 2003. The mesospheric intrusion was identified in three balloon profiles in January and March 2003 as a strong enhancement in CO. In contrast, NO y was not enhanced in the mesospheric air relative to surrounding air masses as shown by the measurement in late March 2003. The measurements influenced by mesospheric air show ozone mixing ratios ranging between 3.6 and 5.6 ppm, which are clearly greater than those found in the "early vortex" reference relation employed to deduce chemical ozone loss. Thus the impact of intrusions of mesospheric air into the polar vortex on chemical ozone loss estimates based on ozone-tracer relations are likely small; the correlations cannot be affected in a way that would lead to an overestimate of ozone depletion. Therefore ozone-tracer relations may be used for deducing chemical ozone loss in Arctic winter 2002-2003. Here we use ILAS-II satellite measurements to deduce an average chemical ozone loss in the vortex core for the partial column 380–550 K of 37 ± 11 Dobson units in March and of 50 ± 10 Dobson units in April 2003.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7pg1s02

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2007-12-13T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact