Middle atmospheric O3, CO, N2O, HNO3, and temperature profiles during the warm Arctic winter 2001-2002

Abstract

Ground-based measurements of stratospheric constituents were carried out from Thule Air Base, Greenland (76.5 N, 68.7 W), during the winters of 2001–2002 and 2002–2003, involving operation of a millimeter-wave spectrometer (GBMS) and a lidar system. This work focuses on the GBMS retrievals of stratospheric O3, CO, N2O, and HNO3, and on lidar stratospheric temperature data obtained during the first of the two winter campaigns, from mid-January to early March 2002. For the Arctic lower stratosphere, the winter 2001–2002 is one of the warmest winters on record. During a large fraction of the winter, the vortex was weakened by the influence of the Aleutian high, with low ozone concentrations and high temperatures observed by GBMS and lidar above 27 km during the second half of February and in early March. At 900 K ( 32 km altitude), the low ozone concentrations observed by GBMS in the Aleutian high are shown to be well correlated to low solar exposure. Throughout the winter, PSCs were rarely observed by POAM III, and the last detection was recorded on 17 January. During the lidar and GBMS observing period that followed, stratospheric temperatures remained above the threshold for PSCs formation throughout the vortex. Nonetheless, using correlations between GBMS O3 and N2O mixing ratios, in early February a large ozone deficiency owing to local ozone loss is noted inside the vortex. GBMS O3-N2O correlations suggest that isentropic transport brought a O3 deficit also to regions near the vortex edge, where transport most likely mimicked local ozone loss.