Ozone trends: A review

Ozone plays a very important role in our atmosphere because it protects any living organisms at the Earth's surface against the harmful solar UVB and UVC radiation. In the stratosphere, ozone plays a critical role in the ener gy budget because it absorbs both solar UV and terrestrial IR radiation. Fu rther, ozone in the tropopause acts as a strong greenhouse gas, and increas ing ozone trends at these altitudes contribute to climate change. This revi ew contains a short description of the various techniques that provided atm ospheric ozone measurements valuable for long-term trend analysis. The anth ropogenic emissions of substances that deplete ozone (chlorine- and bromine -containing volatile gases) have increased from the 1950s until the second half of the 1980s. The most severe consequence of the anthropogenic release of ozone-depleting substances is the "Antarctic ozone hole." Long-term obs ervations indicate that stratospheric ozone depletion in the southern winte r-spring season over Antarctica started in the late 1970s, leading to a str ong decrease in October total ozone means. Present values are only approxim ately half of those observed prior to 1970. In the Arctic, large ozone depl etion was observed in winter and spring in some recent years. Satellite and ground-based measurements show no significant trends in the tropics but si gnificant long-term decreasing trends in the northern and southern midlatit udes (of the order of 2-4% per decade in the period from 1970 to 1996 and a n acceleration in trends in the 1980s). Ozone at northern midlatitudes decr eased by -7.4 +/- 2% per decade at 40 km above mean sea level, while ozone loss was small at 30 km. Large trends were found in the lower stratosphere, -5.1 +/- 1.8% at 20 km and -7.3 +/- 4.6% at 15 km, where the bulk of the o zone resides. The possibility of a reduction in the observed trends has bee n discussed recently, but it is very hard to distinguish this from the natu ral variability. As a consequence of the Montreal Protocol process, the emi ssions of ozone-depleting substances have decreased since the late 1980s. C hlorine is no longer increasing in the stratosphere, although the total bro mine amount is still increasing. Considering anthropogenic emissions of sub stances that deplete ozone, the turnaround in stratospheric ozone trends is expected to take place in the coming years. However, anthropogenic climate change could have a large influence on the future evolution of the Earth's ozone shield.