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Atmospheric science

Putting the wind up ozone

Nature Geoscience volume 2, pages 677–679 (2009)Cite this article

As the Earth warms, the overturning circulation of the upper atmosphere is projected to speed up. Model simulations suggest that this will increase the flux of ozone from the stratosphere to the troposphere, and alter surface levels of ultraviolet radiation.

Ozone in the stratosphere — between about 10 and 50 km altitude — regulates the amount of ultraviolet radiation reaching the Earth's surface1. Consequently, stratospheric ozone depletion is a major source of concern owing to its impacts on human and ecosystem health. Below ∼10 km, in the troposphere, ozone is a key greenhouse gas2 and air pollutant3; here, ozone increases are the problem. Although the Montreal Protocol and its amendments have largely controlled the disastrous impacts of man-made halogenated compounds on the stratospheric ozone layer, there are other anthropogenic influences on ozone that need our urgent attention. In a modelling study on page 687 of this issue, Hegglin and Shepherd show that human-induced climate change will increase the flux of ozone from the stratosphere to the troposphere, and alter the distribution of stratospheric ozone4. This change in stratospheric ozone will result in an increase of up to 20% (over 1960 levels) in the amount of ultraviolet radiation reaching the Earth's surface in the high latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere during spring and summer.

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Figure 1: Schematic of the Brewer–Dobson Circulation and the annual mean distribution of ozone (DU km−1).

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  1. David S. Stevenson is in the School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3JN, UK. david.s.stevenson@ed.ac.uk,

    David S. Stevenson

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  1. David S. Stevenson
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Stevenson, D. Putting the wind up ozone. Nature Geosci 2, 677–679 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo634

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