Journal Article

PreJuSER-22389

http://join2-wiki.gsi.de/foswiki/pub/Main/Artwork/join2_logo100x88.png Technical Note: Ozonesonde Climatology between 1995 and 2011: description, evaluation and applications

Tilmes, S. ; Lamarque, J.-F. ; Emmons, L. K. ; Conley, A. ; Schultz, M. G.FZJ* ; Saunois, M. ; Thouret, V. ; Thompson, A. M. ; Oltmans, S. J. ; Johnson, B. ; Tarasick, D.

2012
EGU Katlenburg-Lindau

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Please use a persistent id in citations: http://hdl.handle.net/2128/7537  doi:10.5194/acp-12-7475-2012

Abstract: An ozone climatology based on ozonesonde measurements taken over the last 17 yr has been constructed for model evaluation and comparisons to other observations. Vertical ozone profiles for 42 stations around the globe have been compiled for the period 1995-2011, in pressure and tropopause-referenced altitudes. For each profile, the mean, standard deviation, median, the half-width are provided, as well as information about interannual variability. Regional aggregates are formed in combining stations with similar ozone characteristics. The Hellinger distance is introduced as a new diagnostic to identify stations that describe similar shapes of ozone probability distribution functions (PDFs). In this way, 12 regions were selected covering at least 2 stations and the variability among those stations is discussed. Significant variability with longitude of ozone distributions in the troposphere and lower stratosphere in the northern mid- and high latitudes is found. The representativeness of regional aggregates is discussed for high northern latitudes, Western Europe, Eastern US, and Japan, using independent observations from surface stations and MOZAIC aircraft data. Good agreement exists between ozonesondes and aircraft observations in the mid- troposphere and between ozonesondes and surface observations for Western Europe. For Eastern US and high northern latitudes, surface ozone values from ozonesondes are biased 10 ppb high compared to independent measurements. An application of the climatology is presented using the NCAR CAM-Chem model. The climatology allows evaluation of the model performance regarding ozone averages, seasonality, interannual variability, and the shape of ozone distributions. The new assessment of the key features of ozone distributions gives deeper insights into the performance of models.

Keyword(s): J

Note: We gratefully acknowledge the effort of the The World Ozone and Ultraviolet Radiation Data Centre (WOUDC) and NOAA Earth system Research Laboratory (ESRL) for providing a collection of high quality ozone soundings. Further, we acknowledge the World Data Center for Greenhouse Gases (WDCGG), the Clean Air Status and Trends Network (CASTNET) and EMEP network for providing a collection of hourly surface observations. We further acknowledge the strong support of the European Commission, Airbus, and the Airlines (Lufthansa, Austrian, Air France) who carry free of charge the MOZAIC equipment and perform the maintenance since 5 1994. MOZAIC is presently funded by INSU-CNRS (France), Meteo-France, and Forschungszentrum (FZJ, Julich, Germany). The MOZAIC data based is supported by ETHER (CNES and INSU-CNRS). The HTAP and CCMVal2 modeling teams are acknowledged for sharing their results and Forschungszentrum Julich and British Atmospheric Data Center (BADC) receive credit for hosting the HTAP and CCMVal2 data bases, respectively. We also thank Jennifer Wei for the helpful discussion on the use of correction factors. Andrew Conley was funded by the Department of Energy under the SciDAC program. The National Center for Atmospheric Research is funded by the National Science Foundation. Finally, we thank all reviewers of this paper and Jennifer Logan for helpful comments and suggestions that helped to significantly improve the paper.

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Contributing Institute(s):

1. Troposphäre (IEK-8)

Research Program(s):

1. Atmosphäre und Klima (P23)

Appears in the scientific report 2012

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Database coverage:
; ; ; ; Current Contents - Social and Behavioral Sciences ; JCR ; SCOPUS ; Science Citation Index ; Science Citation Index Expanded ; Thomson Reuters Master Journal List ; Web of Science Core Collection

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