Quasi-Biennial and Long-Term Fluctuations In Total Ozone

Abstract

Abstract Quasi-biennial and long-term fluctuations in total ozone are estimated from stations with more than 4 yr of record in north polar, tropical, south temperate, and south polar latitudes and more than 8 yr of record in north temperate latitudes. The quasi-biennial total-ozone fluctuations tend to be out of phase in tropical and extratropical latitudes, with the extratropical fluctuations better organized in the Southern than Northern Hemisphere. In the Tropics, the quasi-biennial total-ozone and zonal wind oscillations are significantly in phase, but, in extratropical latitudes, the total-ozone fluctuations are alternately in phase and out of phase with the tropical zonal wind oscillation, the out-of-phase relation being the dominant one. There is the suggestion that the Mt. Agung volcanic eruption in 1963 caused a breakdown of the quasi-biennial, total-ozone oscillation in the Southern Hemisphere subtropics, with anomalously high ozone values a few months after the eruption. We derive, for the past...