Intercomparison of Stratospheric Chemistry Models under Polar Vortex Conditions

• Main Author: D. S. Mckenna
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Antarctic; Arctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.527.7287; http://juwel.fz-juelich.de:8080/dspace/bitstream/2128/644/3/kraemer_et_al_txt.pdf

Several stratospheric chemistry modules from box, 2-D or 3-D models, have been intercom-pared. The intercomparison was focused on the ozone loss and associated reactive species under the conditions found in the cold, wintertime Arctic and Antarctic vortices. Comparisons of both gas phase and heterogeneous chemistry modules show excellent agreement between the models under constrained conditions for photolysis and the microphysics of polar stratospheric clouds. While the mean integral ozone loss ranges from 4 – 80 % for different 30 – 50 days long air par-cel trajectories, the mean scatter of model results around these values is only about 1.5%. In a case study, where the models employed their standard photolysis and microphysical schemes, the variation around the mean percentage ozone loss increases to about 7%. This increased