Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere: Isotopic exchange with ozone and its use as a tracer in the middle atmosphere

Abstract

Atmospheric heavy ozone is enriched in the isotopes ^(18)O and ^(17)O. The magnitude of this enhancement, of the order of 100‰, is very large compared with that commonly known in atmospheric chemistry and geochemistry. The heavy oxygen atom in heavy ozone is therefore useful as a tracer of chemical species and pathways that involve ozone or its derived products. As a test of the isotopic exchange reactions, we successfully carry out a series of numerical experiments to simulate the results of the laboratory experiments performed by Wen and Thiemens [1993] on ozone and CO_2. A small discrepancy between the experimental and the model values for ^(17)O exchange is also revealed. The results are used to compute the magnitude of isotopic exchange between ozone and carbon dioxide via the excited atom O(^1D) in the middle atmosphere. The model for ^(18)O is in good agreement with the observed values.