Summary
Considerable progress in our understanding of the causes of polar stratospheric ozone loss has been made during the past two decades. However, model calculations are still limited by uncertainties in both chemical and dynamical factors. These uncertainties also affect predictions of the future state of stratospheric ozone, such as the point at which the Antarctic “ozone hole” recovers and the extent to which climate changes may impact ozone abundances. The first quasi-Lagrangian measurements of polar stratospheric ozone were made from long-duration stratospheric balloons deployed from McMurdo station during the Concordiasi field campaign in the austral spring of 2010. Several specially designed ultraviolet photometers were built at the University of Colorado Boulder (UCOz) and at Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (LMD, B-Bop) to meet the requirements of long life and low power consumption. These instruments were flown on six Concordiasi balloons launched in September and October 2010 within the developing Antarctic “ozone hole”. Because the balloon trajectories are nearly Lagrangian over a few days’ time, the observations provide a detailed picture of ozone loss in individual air masses. In this presentation, we will describe the Concordiasi balloon project and will present ozone data obtained from the long-duration flights. We will discuss efforts to compare ozone measurements from the Concordiasi balloons with those made from ozonesondes in a Match-style campaign involving Antarctic surface stations at Neumayer, Belgrano, Syowa, Davis, Dumont D’Urville, McMurdo and South Pole. Observations from the Concordiasi balloons will be compared with calculations of photochemical ozone loss using a “self-match” technique in which the observations are tracked using a sophisticated trajectory model and compared over time and at different potential temperatures. The resulting ozone loss rates will be compared with those from other observational techniques and from previous published photochemical modeling studies.
Related projects
