Reconstruction and Simulation of Stratospheric Ozone Distributions during the 2002 Austral Winter

Abstract

Satellite-based solar occultation measurements during the 2002 austral winter have been used to reconstruct global, three-dimensional ozone distributions. The reconstruction method uses correlations between potential vorticity and ozone to derive “proxy” distributions from the geographically limited occultation observations. Ozone profiles from the Halogen Occultation Experiment (HALOE), the Polar Ozone and Aerosol Measurement III (POAM III), and the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment II and III (SAGE II and III) are incorporated into the analysis. Because this is one of the first uses of SAGE III data in a scientific analysis, preliminary validation results are shown. The reconstruction method is described, with particular emphasis on uncertainties caused by noisy and/or multivalued correlations. The evolution of the solar occultation data and proxy ozone fields throughout the winter is described, and differences with respect to previous winters are characterized. The results support the idea that dynamical forcing early in the 2002 winter influenced the morphology of the stratosphere in a significant and unusual manner, possibly setting the stage for the unprecedented major stratospheric warming in late September. The proxy is compared with ozone from mechanistic, primitive equation model simulations of passive ozone tracer fields during the time of the warming. In regions where chemistry is negligible compared to transport, the model and proxy ozone fields agree well. The agreement between, and changes in, the large-scale ozone fields in the model and proxy indicate that transport processes, particularly enhanced poleward transport and mixing, are the primary cause of ozone changes through most of the stratosphere during this unprecedented event. The analysis culminates with the calculation of globally distributed column ozone during the major warming, showing quantitatively how transport of low-latitude air to the polar region in the middle stratosphere led to the diminished ozone hole in 2002.

A global, space-based stratospheric aerosol climatology: 1979 to 2016

“…For GloSSAC we used the OSIRIS aerosol extinction climatology as produced in (Rieger et al, 2015). This climatology provides monthly, latitude and altitude resolved extinction converted to 525nm and bias 15 corrected to SAGE II.…”

“…GloSSAC is most closely related to the Assessment of Stratospheric Aerosol Properties (ASAP) (SPARC, 2006) and CMIP Phase 5 data sets and follows the same basic paradigm that produce those versions. We build it primarily using space-based measurements by a number of instruments including the SAGE series, the (Optical Spectrograph and InfraRed Imager System OSIRIS) (Rieger et al, 2015), the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar 20 and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) (Vernier et al, 2011), Cryogenic Limb Array Etalon Spectrometer (CLAES) (Massie et al, 1996), and the Halogen Occultation Experiment (HALOE) (Thomason, 2012). We compile the data set in monthly depictions for 80°S to 80°N and from the tropopause to 40 km.…”

Increased UV radiation due to polar ozone chemical depletion and vortex occurrences at Southern Sub-polar Latitudes in the period [1997–2005]

“…The year 2001 was characterized by a relatively large ozone hole that remained up to mid-December. Then in the year 2002, a remarkably high planetary wave activity took place in the Southern Hemisphere, which contrasted with previous years (Allen et al,5340 A. F. Pazmiño et al: Increased UV radiation at Southern Sub-polar Latitudes the first stratospheric major warming ever observed in the Southern Hemisphere (Hoppel et al, 2003;Randall et al, 2005;Scaife et al, 2005). In the middle and high stratosphere, the air masses rich in ozone from mid-latitudes were transported to the Polar Regions (Kondragunta et al, 2005).…”

Column ozone and aerosol optical properties retrieved from direct solar irradiance measurements during SOLVE II

“…The total LOS total density (and O 2 ·O 2 ) could be determined by integration of the threedimensional meteorological analyses. Similarly, more realistic LOS ozone could be derived from 3-D ozone fields (Y05-ms), such as those of Randall et al (2005), which have been shown to accurately capture ozone spatial inhomogeneities.…”