Representativeness of single lidar stations for zonally averaged ozone profiles, their trends and attribution to proxies

Christos Zerefos (1, 2) , John Kapsomenakis (1) , Kostas Eleftheratos (3) , Kleareti Tourpali (4) , Irina Petropavlovskikh (5) , Daan Hubert (6) , Sophie Godin-Beekmann (7) , Wolfgang Steinbrecht (8) , Stacey Frith (9) , Viktoria Sofieva (10) , Birgit Hassler (11)

1 Research Centre for Atmospheric Physics and Climatology [Athens]
2 NEO - Navarino Environmental Observatory
3 Faculty of Geology and Geoenvironment [Athens]
4 Laboratory of Atmospheric Physics [Thessaloniki]
5 CIRES - Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences
6 BIRA-IASB - Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy / Institut d'Aéronomie Spatiale de Belgique
7 STRATO - LATMOS
8 DWD - Deutscher Wetterdienst [Offenbach]
9 GSFC - NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
10 FMI - Finnish Meteorological Institute
11 IPA - DLR Institut für Physik der Atmosphäre = DLR Institute of Atmospheric Physics

This paper is focusing on the representativeness of single lidar stations for zonally averaged ozone profile variations over the middle and upper stratosphere. From the lower to the upper stratosphere, ozone profiles from single or grouped lidar stations correlate well with zonal means calculated from the Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet Radiome- ter (SBUV) satellite overpasses. The best representativeness with significant correlation coefficients is found within 15  of latitude circles north or south of any lidar station. This paper also includes a multivariate linear regression (MLR) analysis on the relative importance of proxy time series for explaining variations in the vertical ozone profiles. Stud- ied proxies represent variability due to influences outside of the earth system (solar cycle) and within the earth sys- tem, i.e. dynamic processes (the Quasi Biennial Oscilla- tion, QBO; the Arctic Oscillation, AO; the Antarctic Os- cillation, AAO; the El Niño Southern Oscillation, ENSO), those due to volcanic aerosol (aerosol optical depth, AOD), tropopause height changes (including global warming) and those influences due to anthropogenic contributions to at- mospheric chemistry (equivalent effective stratospheric chlo- rine, EESC). Ozone trends are estimated, with and with- out removal of proxies, from the total available 1980 to 2015 SBUV record. Except for the chemistry related proxy (EESC) and its orthogonal function, the removal of the other proxies does not alter the significance of the estimated long- term trends. At heights above 15 hPa an “inflection point” between 1997 and 1999 marks the end of significant nega- tive ozone trends, followed by a recent period between 1998 and 2015 with positive ozone trends. At heights between 15 and 40 hPa the pre-1998 negative ozone trends tend to be- come less significant as we move towards 2015, below which the lower stratosphere ozone decline continues in agreement with findings of recent literature

Domaines: Physique Atmosphérique et Océanique [physics.ao-ph]

Christos Zerefos, John Kapsomenakis, Kostas Eleftheratos, Kleareti Tourpali, Irina Petropavlovskikh, et al.. Representativeness of single lidar stations for zonally averaged ozone profiles, their trends and attribution to proxies. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 2018, 18, pp.6427-6440. ⟨10.5194/acp-18-6427-2018⟩. ⟨insu-01661898⟩