Polar stratospheric clouds due to vapor enhancement: HALOE observations of the Antarctic vortex in 1993

Abstract

Aerosol measurements from the Halogen Occultation Experiment (HALOE) during the Antarctic spring of 1993 are compared with calculations of the volume of different types of polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) at equilibrium. The observed volumes increased by a factor of ∼30 coincident with water vapor enhancements of ∼3 ppmv, suggesting that the enhancement of water vapor was important in determining PSC growth. The enhanced water vapor was coincident with increased methane mixing ratios, and trajectory analysis suggests that the vapor enhancements were consistent with transport from lower latitudes. The nitric acid distribution was not measured and is treated either as constant or as positively correlated with the observed water. Comparing the observed volumes with model calculations assuming constant nitric acid suggests that the PSCs were composed of liquid ternary H2SO4‐H2O‐HNO3 aerosols (LTA) rather than solid nitric acid trihydrate (NAT). However, if the water vapor intrusions were accompanied by enhanced nitric acid, the observations closely match predictions for solid NAT, and those for LTA. These comparisons highlight the importance of the vapor distributions for modeling PSC growth and suggest that vapor resupply is important for late spring PSC growth. This work also highlights some inherent limitations of large field of view limb‐viewing instruments for the observation of PSCs.