Thermal response to ozone fluctuations in the stratosphere

Abstract

V/e have investigated the extent to which temperature fluctuations in the stratosphere, at low-latitude, are controlled by O3 absorption of solar and ground radiation. From a one dimensional model, we calculated the expected local heating due to a local O3 increase. The measured thermal response at different heights then allows us to estimate the local fluctuations in the O3 abundance, which in turn yields a correlation between the total measured O3 fluctuations and that expected from the local temperature fluctuations. Thus we compared the theoretical expectation of AT versus ACOgl with a regression analysis of the total O3 and local radiosonde temperature at 1, 5, 3, 2, and 1 mb for four low-latitude stations. The expected total O3 fluctuations are comparable to the observed variations of total O3, suggesting therefore, that O3 has important controlling influence on the local temperature fluctuations in the stratosphere.