Chemical Change in the Arctic Vortex During AASE II

• Main Authors: Wesley A. Traub, Kenneth W. Jucks, David G. Johnson, Kelly V. Chance
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arctic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.502.7448; http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/firs/papers/dc8.pdf

We measured column abundances of HF, HCl, O3, HNO3, and H2O on the NASA DC-8 during the AASE II campaign, using thermal emission spectroscopy. We made multiple traversals of the Arctic vortex and surroundings. Using HF as a tracer, we remove the effects of subsidence from the measured column abundances; perturbations in the resulting column abundances are attributed to chemical processing. We find that by January 1992 the stratospheric column in the vortex had been chemically depleted by about (55 10) % in HCl and (35 10) % in O3, and enhanced by about (15 10) % in HNO3 and (0 10) % in H2O. 1