Spatiotemporal variations of NO y species in the northern latitudes stratosphere measured with the balloon-borne MIPAS instrument

• Main Authors: Wiegele, A., Kleinert, A., Oelhaf, H., Ruhnke, R., Wetzel, G., Friedl-Vallon, F., Lengel, A., Maucher, G., Nordmeyer, H., Fischer, H.
• Other Authors: Institute for Meteorology and Climate Research (IMK), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2008
• Subjects: [SDU.OCEAN]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Ocean; Atmosphere; Arctic
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-00304015; https://hal.science/hal-00304015/document; https://hal.science/hal-00304015/file/acpd-8-4693-2008.pdf

International audience This paper presents the spatiotemporal distribution of NO y species at altitudes between 14 and 31 km as measured with the MIPAS-B instrument on the morning of 21 March 2003 in northern Scandinavia. At lower altitudes, temperature variations and the distribution of ClONO 2 and the tracer N 2 O reveal the dynamics along the cross section through the edge of the late arctic polar vortex. At higher altitudes, continuous measurement before, during, and after sunrise provides information about photochemistry illustrating the evolution of the photochemically active gases NO 2 and N 2 O 5 around sunrise. The measured temporal evolution of NO 2 and N 2 O 5 is compared to box modelling that is run along backward calculated trajectories. With regard to NO 2 , there is a good agreement between the model and observations in terms of quantity but the photochemistry in the model is slightly too slow. The comparison of measured and modelled N 2 O 5 , however, reveals significant differences of the absolute quantities pointing at a too slow photochemistry in the model.