• Main Authors: T. Wagner, C. Leue, K. Pfeilsticker, U. Platt
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Antarctic; Arctic; Austral; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.565.7280; http://joseba.mpch-mainz.mpg.de/pdf_dateien/wagner_10.pdf

Abstract. Measurements of OClO total column amounts by the GOME instrument (Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment) in the austral and boreal winter stratospheres from 1995 through 2000 are presented. GOME is a four channel UV/visible spectrometer (240 nm – 790 nm) deployed on the polar orbiting European ERS-2 satellite since April 1995. Previous studies have shown that the observations of OClO can serve as an indicator for a stratospheric chlorine activation. The GOME observations allows us to infer the first global data set of OClO, and to study continuous time series of its occurrence in both winter stratospheres. It is found that, while OClO regularly occurs over Antarctica in similar amounts and seasonal timing during the different winters, its occurrence is much more variable in the Arctic winter stratosphere. About 40% larger OClO column amounts are found in the Antarctic polar stratosphere than in its northern counterpart.