Editor's Summary
26 June 2008
Tropical ozone destruction: Halogens tidy up
Tropospheric ozone is an important greenhouse gas in addition to its influence on air quality, on the photochemical processing of atmospheric chemicals and on ecosystem viability. Increasing tropospheric ozone levels over the past 150 years have led to a significant climate perturbation and a full understanding of the factors controlling the tropospheric ozone budget is required. The tropical marine boundary layer is the most important global region for loss of ozone, because of its high water vapour content, high solar radiation levels and large geographical extent. Surface atmospheric observations in this region are extremely sparse, hence the importance of a new year-round dataset from Cape Verde Observatory in the tropical North Atlantic Ocean. The observations reveal that the photochemical destruction rate of ozone in the tropical marine boundary layer is about 50% greater than predicted by current global models, and that this destruction is caused by halogen chemistry.
News and Views: Atmospheric chemistry: Sun, sea and ozone destruction
Halogens are known to decrease the levels of stratospheric ozone. The latest measurements show that something similar occurs in the lower atmosphere over tropical oceans — and probably above most other oceans, too.
Roland von Glasow
doi:10.1038/4531195a
Letter: Extensive halogen-mediated ozone destruction over the tropical Atlantic Ocean
Katie A. Read, Anoop S. Mahajan, Lucy J. Carpenter, Mathew J. Evans, Bruno V. E. Faria, Dwayne E. Heard, James R. Hopkins, James D. Lee, Sarah J. Moller, Alastair C. Lewis, Luis Mendes, James B. McQuaid, Hilke Oetjen, Alfonso Saiz-Lopez, Michael J. Pilling & John M. C. Plane
doi:10.1038/nature07035
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (282K) | Supplementary information
