GLOBAL PATTERNS OF THE QUASI-BIENNIAL OSCILLATION IN TOTAL OZONE uri icon

abstract

  • Nine years of total ozone measurements from the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) on Nimbus 7 are used to study the global structure of the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) in total ozone. In both hemispheres, midlatitude anomalies are two to three times larger in winter than in summer. Global patterns of the ozone QBO are identified by computing lagged correlations between the zonal-mean equatorial ozone and ozone elsewhere on the globe. Correlations between equatorial and extratropical ozone are weak during the summer season (r ~ 0) and large and negative during the winter (r < -0.8 in the Southern Hemisphere and r < -0.6 in the northern Hemisphere). There are nodes or phase shifts in the correlation patterns at 10 latitude, at 60S, and at 50N. Large negative correlations extend to the poles in both winter hemispheres. The extra tropical ozone anomalies resemble a seasonally modulated standing oscillation, possibly resulting from quasi-biennial wave forcing of the planetary-scale mean meridional circulation and the associated vertical advection of ozone. -from Author

published proceedings

  • JOURNAL OF THE ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES

altmetric score

  • 3

author list (cited authors)

  • BOWMAN, K. P.

citation count

  • 109

complete list of authors

  • BOWMAN, KP

publication date

  • November 1989