Ozone depletion in tropospheric volcanic plumes

We measured ozone (O3) concentrations in the atmospheric plumes of the volcanoes St. Augustine (1976), Mt. Etna (2004, 2009) and Eyjafjallajökull (2010) and found O3 to be strongly depleted compared to the background at each volcano. At Mt. Etna O3 was depleted within tens of seconds from the crater...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geophysical Research Letters
Main Authors: Vance, A, McGonigle, AJS, Stith, JL, Turnbull, K, Von Glasow, R., AIUPPA, Alessandro
Other Authors: Aiuppa, A, Von Glasow, R
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: American Geophysical Union 2010
Subjects:
ozone depletion
volcanic plumes
Eyjafjallajökull
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10447/53957
https://doi.org/10.1029/2010GL044997
Description
Summary:We measured ozone (O3) concentrations in the atmospheric plumes of the volcanoes St. Augustine (1976), Mt. Etna (2004, 2009) and Eyjafjallajökull (2010) and found O3 to be strongly depleted compared to the background at each volcano. At Mt. Etna O3 was depleted within tens of seconds from the crater, the age of the St. Augustine plumes was on the order of hours, whereas the O3 destruction in the plume of Eyjafjallajökull was maintained in 1–9 day old plumes. The most likely cause for this O3 destruction are catalytic bromine reactions as suggested by a model that manages to reproduce the very early destruction of O3 but also shows that O3 destruction is ongoing for several days. Given the observed rapid and sustained destruction of O3, heterogeneous loss of O3 on ash is unlikely to be important.

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