Stratospheric

• Main Authors: Björn-martin Sinnhuber, Gregor Kiesewetter, Peter Von Der Gathen, Markus Rex
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arctic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.506.3035; http://www.atmosp.physics.utoronto.ca/SPARC/SPARC2008GA/Posters/SessionB_P90_A125_Sinnhuber.pdf

Understanding the processes that control the inter-annual variability of Arctic total ozone during winter and spring is important to predict how the ozone layer will evolve in the coming decades. It is now well accepted that high latitude total ozone during spring is largely controlled by the flux of planetary-scale waves into the stratosphere during mid-winter, as measured by the Eliassen-Palm (EP) flux. E.g., years with low wave activity during mid-winter exhibit reduced poleward and downward ozone transport, enhanced confinement of air masses at high latitudes and low temperatures that favour chemical ozone destruction. Here we now show that the inter-annual variability of Arctic total ozone during March is highly correlated with high latitude ozone in the mid-stratosphere during the previous summer and autumn. This raises the question of what controls the stratospheric inter-annual variability during winter and spring. Inter-annual variability in polar ozone