Stratospheric ozone loss over the Eurasian continent induced by the polar vortex shift

Jiankai Zhang (1) , Wenshou Tian (1) , Fei Xie (2) , Martyn Chipperfield (3) , Wuhu Feng (3, 4) , Seok-Woo Son (5) , N. Luke Abraham (4, 6) , Alexander Archibald (6, 4) , Slimane Bekki (7) , Neal Butchart (8) , Makoto Deushi (9) , Sandip Dhomse (3) , Yuanyuan Han (1) , Patrick Jöckel (10) , Douglas Kinnison (11) , Ole Kirner (12) , Martine Michou (13) , Olaf Morgenstern (14) , Fiona O’connor (8) , Giovanni Pitari (15) , David Plummer (16) , Laura Revell (17, 18) , Eugene Rozanov (19, 17) , Daniele Visioni (20, 15) , Wuke Wang (21) , Guang Zeng (14)

1 MOE Key Laboratory of Semi-Arid Climate Change
2 GCESS - College of Global Change and Earth System Science
3 ICAS - Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science [Leeds]
4 NCAS - National Centre for Atmospheric Science [Leeds]
5 SEES - School of Earth and Environmental Sciences [Seoul]
6 Department of Chemistry [Cambridge, UK]
7 STRATO - LATMOS
8 MOHC - Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Change
9 MRI - Meteorological Research Institute [Tsukuba]
10 IPA - DLR Institut für Physik der Atmosphäre
11 NCAR - National Center for Atmospheric Research [Boulder]
12 KIT - Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
13 CNRM - Centre national de recherches météorologiques
14 NIWA - National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research [Wellington]
15 DSFC - Department of Physical and Chemical Sciences [L'Aquila]
16 Environment and Climate Change Canada
17 IAC - Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science [Zürich]
18 Bodeker Scientific
19 PMOD/WRC - Physikalisch-Meteorologisches Observatorium Davos/World Radiation Center
20 Centre of Excellence CETEMPS
21 ICGCR - Institute for Climate and Global Change Research [Nanjing]

The Montreal Protocol has succeeded in limiting major ozone-depleting substance emissions, and consequently stratospheric ozone concentrations are expected to recover this century. However, there is a large uncertainty in the rate of regional ozone recovery in the Northern Hemisphere. Here we identify a Eurasia-North America dipole mode in the total column ozone over the Northern Hemisphere, showing negative and positive total column ozone anomaly centres over Eurasia and North America, respectively. The positive trend of this mode explains an enhanced total column ozone decline over the Eurasian continent in the past three decades, which is closely related to the polar vortex shift towards Eurasia. Multiple chemistry-climate-model simulations indicate that the positive Eurasia-North America dipole trend in late winter is likely to continue in the near future. Our findings suggest that the anticipated ozone recovery in late winter will be sensitive not only to the ozone-depleting substance decline but also to the polar vortex changes, and could be substantially delayed in some regions of the Northern Hemisphere extratropics.

Domains: Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics [physics.ao-ph]; Ocean, Atmosphere

Jiankai Zhang, Wenshou Tian, Fei Xie, Martyn Chipperfield, Wuhu Feng, et al.. Stratospheric ozone loss over the Eurasian continent induced by the polar vortex shift. Nature Communications, 2018, 9, pp.206(2018). ⟨10.1038/s41467-017-02565-2⟩. ⟨insu-01705720⟩