Abstract
Abstract. The international research project RECONCILE has addressed central questions regarding polar ozone depletion, with the objective to quantify some of the most relevant yet still uncertain physical and chemical processes and thereby improve prognostic modelling capabilities to realistically predict the response of the ozone layer to climate change. This overview paper outlines the scope and the general approach of RECONCILE, and it provides a summary of observations and modelling in 2010 and 2011 that have generated an in many respects unprecedented dataset to study processes in the Arctic winter stratosphere. Principally, it summarises important outcomes of RECONCILE including (i) better constraints and enhanced consistency on the set of parameters governing catalytic ozone destruction cycles, (ii) a better understanding of the role of cold binary aerosols in heterogeneous chlorine activation, (iii) an improved scheme of polar stratospheric cloud (PSC) processes that includes heterogeneous nucleation of nitric acid trihydrate (NAT) and ice on non-volatile background aerosol leading to better model parameterisations with respect to denitrification, and (iv) long transient simulations with a chemistry-climate model (CCM) updated based on the results of RECONCILE that better reproduce past ozone trends in Antarctica and are deemed to produce more reliable predictions of future ozone trends. The process studies and the global simulations conducted in RECONCILE show that in the Arctic, ozone depletion uncertainties in the chemical and microphysical processes are now clearly smaller than the sensitivity to dynamic variability.
Highlights
The international research project RECONCILE, short for “Reconciliation of essential process parameters for an enhanced predictability of Arctic stratospheric ozone loss and its climate interactions”, has investigated processes involved in polar ozone depletion with the central aim to better represent the relevant processes in global climate models
Using CLaMS along 7-day backward trajectories from RECONCILE flight tracks, which had observed temperatures expected to lead to chlorine activation, Wegner et al (2012) found virtually no difference in chlorine activation between simulations that employed the full polar stratospheric cloud (PSC) scheme with the aerosol surface area density (SAD) increasing with STS, nitric acid trihydrate (NAT), and ice formation and simulations that kept the SAD at background levels for the case considered
This has been demonstrated by Wegner et al (2013a), who argue that, during the polar night, a major part of HCl is dissolved in STS particles, because heterogeneous reactions, especially with ClONO2, cannot explain the observed loss of gas-phase HCl due to shortage of NOx even if the photolysis of condensed phase HNO3 is taken into account as a potential additional NOx source
Summary
Institute for Data Processing and Electronics, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Institut für KAanrglserwuhanedItnestGiteuotewoisfsTenecschhnaofltoegny,,UKmarwlserlutmheiG,nGeerearolmosgaincey,ieDanrmtifsitcadt, 9Meteorologisches Institut, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München, GermanMy odel Development 10ETH Zurich, Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, Zurich, Switzerland 11Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany Meteorology and Climate Research, of Physics, University of Wuppertal, Karlsruhe Germany 14Department of Physics of Complex Systems, Eötvös Loránd University, Pázmány P. s. 1/EA,a1r1t1h7 BSuydaspteestm, Hungary 15Department of Geosciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway 16Met Office, Exeter, UK 18Institute for Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany 19Central Aerological Observatory, Dolgoprudny, Moskow Region, Russia 20MISU, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden 25CSEM Centre Suisse d’Electronique et de Microtechnique SA, Neuchâtel, Switzerland 26Norwegian Institute for Air Research, Kjeller, Norway Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union. 28Science Systems and Applications, Inc. Hampton, VA 23666, USA 29Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research Utrecht (IMAU), Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands 30JPL/NASA, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA 31Department of Physics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada 32Ente Nazionale per le Nuove tecnologie, l’Energia e l’Ambiente, Roma, Italy ∗now at: School of Earth Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia ∗∗now at: Laboratory of Atmospheric Chemistry, Paul Scherrer Institut, Villigen, Switzerland ∗∗∗now at: School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, UK ∗∗∗∗now at: Institute for Meteorology and Climate Research, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany ∗∗∗∗∗now at: The British Museum, London, UK ∗∗∗∗∗∗now at: Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Institute of Energy and Climate Research (IEK-7), Jülich, Germany Received: 11 November 2012 – Published in Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss.: 27 November 2012 Revised: 30 July 2013 – Accepted: 30 July 2013 – Published: 16 September 2013
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