On the Long-term Stability of Satellite and Ground-based Ozone Profile Records

Daan Hubert (1) , Jean-Christopher Lambert (1) , Tijl Verhoelst (1) , Arno Keppens (1) , José Granville (1) , Pawan K. Bhartia (2) , Adam E. Bourassa (3) , Robert Damadeo (4) , Doug A. Degenstein (3) , Lucien Froidevaux (5) , Sophie Godin-Beekmann (6) , Bryan J. Johnson (7) , Niklaus Kaempfer (8) , Thierry Leblanc (5) , Günter Lichtenberg (9) , Donal P. Murtagh (10) , Eliane Maillard Barras (11) , Hideaki Nakane (12) , Gerald Nedoluha (13) , Thierry Portafaix (14) , Richard Querel (15) , Piera Raspollini (16) , James-M. Russell (17) , J. Salvador (18) , Herman G. J. Smit (19) , Viktoria Sofieva (20) , Kerstin Stebel (21) , Wolfgang Steinbrecht (22) , René Stübi (23) , Daan P. J. Swart (24) , David W. Tarasick (25) , Anne M. Thompson (2) , Roeland van Malderen (26) , Thomas von Clarmann (27) , Peter von Der Gathen (28) , Kaley A. Walker (29) , Mark Weber (30) , Jacquelyn C. Witte (31) , Wolfram Elian (32) , Joseph M. Zawodny (4)

1 BIRA-IASB - Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy / Institut d'Aéronomie Spatiale de Belgique
2 GSFC - NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
3 ISAS - Institute of Space and Atmospheric Studies [Saskatoon]
4 LaRC - NASA Langley Research Center [Hampton]
5 JPL - Jet Propulsion Laboratory
6 STRATO - LATMOS
7 NOAA - National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
8 OCCR - Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research
9 IMF - DLR Institut für Methodik der Fernerkundung / DLR Remote Sensing Technology Institute
10 Chalmers University of Technology [Göteborg]
11 Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss
12 NIES - National Institute for Environmental Studies
13 NRL - Naval Research Laboratory
14 LACy - Laboratoire de l'Atmosphère et des Cyclones
15 NIWA - National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research [Lauder]
16 IFAC - Istituto di Fisica Applicata "Nello Carrara"
17 CAS - Center for Atmospheric Sciences [Hampton]
18 CEILAP - Centro de Investigaciones en Láseres y Aplicaciones [Buenos Aires]
19 Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH | Centre de recherche de Juliers
20 FMI - Finnish Meteorological Institute
21 NILU - Norwegian Institute for Air Research
22 MOHp - Meteorologisches Observatorium Hohenpeißenberg
23 Payerne Aerological Station
24 RIVM - National Institute for Public Health and the Environment [Bilthoven]
25 Environment and Climate Change Canada
26 IRM - Institut Royal Météorologique de Belgique [Bruxelles] - Royal Meteorological Institute
27 KIT - Karlsruher Institut für Technologie
28 AWI - Alfred-Wegener-Institut, Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung
29 University of Toronto
30 University of Bremen
31 SSAI - Science Systems and Applications, Inc. [Lanham]
32 CITEDEF - Instituto de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas para la Defensa

In recent years, many analyses of space- and ground-based data records reported signs or evidence of increasing ozone concentrations in the extrapolar upper stratosphere since the late 1990s. However, the magnitude and significance of the trend estimates vary from one study to another, prompting the ozone research community to further investigate the causes of these differences. A broader consensus has emerged in the past year, placing the positive trend in the upper stratosphere on solid ground and heralding the start of an observation-based exploration of the recovery of stratospheric ozone. More accurate trend estimates are needed to identify the geophysical processes contributing to the recovery and their relative importance. Uncovering seasonal and spatial trend patterns will be key in reaching this objective, not just in the extrapolar upper stratosphere but elsewhere as well. However, at the moment, it remains unclear whether current ozone profile observing systems are able to provide this information. We address this question with an exploration of the capabilities and limitations of current data records in space (limb/occultation sounders) and on the ground (NDACC/GAW/SHADOZ-affiliated sonde, stratospheric lidar and microwave radiometer sites) to infer decadal trends and their vertical, latitudinal and seasonal patterns. We focus on long-term stability, one of the key drivers of the ability to detect trends. We present updated results of a comprehensive analysis that allowed us to quantify the drift of satellite data relative to the ground-based networks (Hubert et al., 2016). In a companion analysis we exploited the satellite data to uncover temporal and spatial inhomogeneities in the ground-based time series, some of which were traced to known changes occurring at different moments across the network. These changes add to the challenge to derive unbiased ozone trends from ground-based observations and they impede our ability to constrain satellite drift to the level required for current and future ozone trend assessments. We conclude that ongoing efforts to homogenise the ground-based data records are essential.

Domains: Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics [physics.ao-ph]

Daan Hubert, Jean-Christopher Lambert, Tijl Verhoelst, Arno Keppens, José Granville, et al.. On the Long-term Stability of Satellite and Ground-based Ozone Profile Records. AGU 2017 Fall Meeting, Dec 2017, New Orleans, United States. ⟨insu-01683142⟩