Extrapolating future Arctic ozone losses

• Main Authors: Knudsen, B. M., Andersen, S. B., Christiansen, B., Larsen, N., Rex, Markus, Harris, N. R. P., Naujokat, B.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2004
• Subjects: Arctic
• Online Access: https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/8867/; https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.19390

Future increases in the concentration of greenhouse gases and water vapor are likely to cool the stratosphere further and increase the amount of polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs). Future Arctic PSC areas have been extrapolated using highly significant trends from 1958-2001. Using a tight correlation between PSCs and the total vortex ozone depletion and taking the decreasing amounts of ozone depleting substances into account we attempt to predict ozone losses in the future. The result is that ozone losses increase until 2010-2020 and only decrease slightly up to 2030. This result constitutes an alternative prediction different from those of chemistry-climate models, which do not include some important processes affecting the ozone layer and do not agree on the fate of the Arctic ozone layer.