Decadal evolution of the Antarctic ozone hole
- Creators
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Jiang, Yibo
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Yung, Yuk L.
- Zurek, Richard W.
Abstract
Ozone column amounts obtained by the total ozone mapping spectrometer (TOMS) in the southern polar region are analyzed during late austral winter and spring (days 240–300) for 1980–1991 using area-mapping techniques and area-weighted vortex averages. The vortex here is defined using the −50 PVU (1 PVU = 1.0 × 10^(−6) K kg^(−1) m^2 s^(−1)) contour on the 500 K isentropic surface. The principal results are: (1) there is a distinct change after 1985 in the vortex-averaged column ozone depletion rate during September and October, the period of maximum ozone loss, and (2) the vortex-averaged column ozone in late August (day 240) has dropped by 70 Dobson units (DU) in a decade due to the loss in the dark and the dilution effect. The mean ozone depletion rate in the vortex between day 240 and the day of minimum vortex-averaged ozone is about 1 DU d^(−1) at the beginning of the decade, increasing to about 1.8 DU d^(−1) by 1985, and then apparently saturating thereafter. The vortex-average column ozone during September and October has declined at the rate of 11.3 DU yr^(−1) (3.8%) from 1980 to 1987 (90 DU over 8 years) and at a smaller rate of 2 DU yr^(−1) (0.9%) from 1987 to 1991 (10 DU over 5 years, excluding the anomalous year 1988). We interpret the year-to-year trend in the ozone depletion rate during the earlier part of the decade as due to the rise of anthropogenic chlorine in the atmosphere. The slower trend at the end of the decade indicates saturation of ozone depletion in the vortex interior, in that chlorine amounts in the mid-1980s were already sufficiently high to deplete most of the ozone in air within the isolated regions of the lower-stratospheric polar vortex. In subsequent years, increases in stratospheric chlorine may have enhanced wintertime chemical loss of ozone in the south polar vortex even before major losses during the Antarctic spring.
Additional Information
© 1986 by the American Geophysical Union. Received January 24, 1995; revised December 13, 1995; accepted December 13, 1995. We would like to express our appreciation to R. S. Stolarski for sharing his insights of the TOMS data with us. The NMC geopotential height and temperature stratospheric analyses were obtained from the National Center for Atmospheric Research as part of an EOS interdisciplinary science investigation; wind and PV fields were derived and provided by Gloria Manney at JPL. We thank M. Allen, L. Froidevaux, R. Herman, L. Jaegle, R. Salawitch, S. Sander, and three anonymous referees for valuable comments. This work was supported principally by NASA grant NAGW 2204 to the California Institute of Technology and was carried out there and at JPL, under contract with NASA. Contribution number 5465 from the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology.Attached Files
Accepted Version - jgrd4155.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 48665
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20140818-142552835
- NAGW 2204
- NASA
- NASA/JPL/Caltech
- Created
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2014-08-19Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences
- Other Numbering System Name
- Caltech Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences
- Other Numbering System Identifier
- 5465