CORRELATED OBSERVATIONS OF HCL AND CLONO2 FROM UARS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR STRATOSPHERIC CHLORINE PARTITIONING Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • We present the first nearglobal set of correlated measurements of stratospheric HCl and ClONO2 concentrations. These data, obtained from the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) between August 1992 and March 1993, are analyzed using the Goddard trajectory mapping technique. These data indicate that, between 20 and 30 km altitude and 60N to 60S latitude, total inorganic chlorine (Cly) is fairly evenly distributed between ClONO2 and HCl, with HCl the slightly more dominant reservoir. The sum of UARS measurements of HCl and nighttime ClONO2, which approximates Cly at these altitudes, closely agrees with Cly derived from a tracerCly relation originally derived from aircraft data, increasing confidence in the UARS data. Comparisons between these data and twodimensional model results suggest that models underpredict ClONO2 (overpredict HCl) near 20 km and overpredict ClONO2 (underpredict HCl) near 30 km, although the 20km underprediction is not as large as analyses of aircraft measurements have indicated. Copyright 1995 by the American Geophysical Union.

published proceedings

  • GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS

author list (cited authors)

  • DESSLER, A. E., CONSIDINE, D. B., MORRIS, G. A., SCHOEBERL, M. R., RUSSELL, J. M., ROCHE, A. E., ... YUE, G. K.

citation count

  • 46

complete list of authors

  • DESSLER, AE||CONSIDINE, DB||MORRIS, GA||SCHOEBERL, MR||RUSSELL, JM||ROCHE, AE||KUMER, JB||MERGENTHALER, JL||WATERS, JW||GILLE, JC||YUE, GK

publication date

  • July 1995