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Ozone mystery laid to rest

Measurements of atmospheric ozone levels taken during the nineteenth century cast doubt on the computational models used today to simulate the atmosphere. An independent proxy of past ozone levels offers reassurance.
  1. Mathew Evans

    1. Mathew Evans is at the Wolfson Atmospheric Chemistry Laboratories, Department of Chemistry, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK.

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Before the 1950s, direct observations of the composition of the atmosphere were extremely limited. Air trapped in pockets of snow and ice has allowed the observational record for some gases to be extended back hundreds of years. But certain gases that affect climate and air quality, such as ozone (O3), are not stable in ice or snow, limiting their records to the past few decades. Writing in Nature, Yeung et al.1 report that isotopic observations of oxygen (O2) molecules trapped in polar snow and ice can provide a new constraint on estimates of ozone levels in the troposphere (the lowest 12 kilometres of the atmosphere) over the past 150 years. This greatly extends our knowledge of the concentration of this key atmospheric gas, and might finally address a problem that has worried atmospheric chemists for decades.

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Nature 570, 167-168 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-01752-z

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