A REEVALUATION OF THE OZONE BUDGET WITH HALOE UARS DATA - NO EVIDENCEFOR THE OZONE DEFICIT

Recently, additional ozone production mechanisms have been proposed to resolve the ozone deficit problem, which arises from greater ozone de struction than production in several photochemical models of the upper stratosphere and lower mesosphere. A detailed ozone model budget anal ysis was performed with simultaneous observations of O-3, HCl, H2O, CH 4, NO, and NO2 from the Halogen Occultation Experiment (HALOE) an the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) under conditions with the s trongest photochemical control of ozone. The results indicate that an ozone deficit may not exist. On the contrary, the use of currently rec ommended photochemical parameters leads to insufficient ozone destruct ion in the model.