Identification

Title

Prolonged and pervasive perturbations in the composition of the Southern Hemisphere midlatitude lower stratosphere from the Australian New Year's fires

Abstract

The 2019/2020 Australian New Year's wildfires injected record amounts of smoke and biomass burning products into the lower stratosphere. The Aura Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) tracked the evolution of distinct plumes of fire-influenced air as they rapidly spiraled up to the mid-stratosphere. In the months following the fires, smoke spread throughout the Southern Hemisphere (SH) stratosphere. We contrast the evolution of the SH midlatitude lower stratosphere in 2020 with the 17-year MLS record. Long after the coherent plumes dispersed, data from MLS and other satellite instruments show unprecedented persistent and pervasive depletion in HCl (50%-60% below climatology) and enhancements in ClO and ClONO2 that were not transport related; peak anomalies occurred in mid-2020. We conclude that the observed perturbations likely arose from heterogeneous chlorine activation on widespread smoke particles. The sustained chlorine activation was far weaker than in typical winter polar vortices, inducing at most minor changes in ozone.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7fj2md8

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

2022-02-28T00:00:00Z

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