2018 · Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
Evidence for a continuous decline in lower stratospheric ozone offsetting ozone layer recovery
Ball and colleagues
What was measured. Multiple satellite records of ozone by altitude, 60°S–60°N, after 1998. Not a model.
What it does to the budget. Upper-stratospheric ozone is rising. Lower-stratospheric ozone kept falling, and that fall dominates, so the stratospheric column between 60°S and 60°N trends down. The total column from the ground does not show it, because tropospheric ozone rose and cancelled the stratospheric loss. The authors write that the cause is not clear and that models do not reproduce the trend.
What cancels the stratospheric loss in the total column
DU
Printed in the paper, not read off the colour figure. A fit to deseasonalised tropospheric ozone is 1.68 DU per decade. Over 1998–2016 that is about 3 DU. They say that more than accounts for the roughly 2 DU gap between the stratospheric-column peak and the total-column peak, 60°S–60°N. The altitude-resolved colour maps were not published as a table.