Ozone in the boundary layer air over the Arctic Ocean: measurements during the TARA transpolar drift 2006–2008

A full year of measurements of surface ozone over the Arctic Ocean far removed from land is presented (81° N–88° N latitude). The data were obtained during the drift of the French schooner TARA between September 2006 and January 2008, while frozen in the Arctic Ocean. The data confirm that long peri...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: S. V. Nghiem, S. Morin, S. Netcheva, J. W. Bottenheim
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Copernicus Publications 2009
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doaj.org/article/e74d7525ebe54064afadc08da75b6453
Description
Summary:A full year of measurements of surface ozone over the Arctic Ocean far removed from land is presented (81° N–88° N latitude). The data were obtained during the drift of the French schooner TARA between September 2006 and January 2008, while frozen in the Arctic Ocean. The data confirm that long periods of virtually total absence of ozone occur in the spring (mid March to mid June) after Polar sunrise. At other times of the year, ozone concentrations are comparable to other oceanic observations with winter mole fractions of ca. 30–40 nmol mol −1 and summer minima of ca. 20 nmol mol −1 . Contrary to earlier observations from ozone sonde data obtained at Arctic coastal observatories, the ambient temperature was well above −20°C during most ODEs (ozone depletion episodes). Backwards trajectory calculations suggest that during these ODEs the air had previously been in contact with the frozen ocean surface for several days and originated largely from the Siberian coast where several large open flaw leads and polynyas developed in the spring of 2007.