Who is validating instruments with the ozone process
20-Apr-2020 05:03
Fundamental differences in observed ozone depletion between the Arctic and the Antarctic are shown, clarifying distinctions between both average and extreme ozone decreases in the two hemispheres.
Balloon-borne and satellite measurements in the heart of the ozone layer near 18−24 km altitude show that extreme ozone decreases often observed in the Antarctic ozone hole region have not yet been measured in the Arctic in any year, including the unusually cold Arctic spring of 2011.
Are Arctic ozone losses ever observed to be as extreme as those in the Antarctic?
Some authors have variously characterized Arctic ozone loss in 2011 as unprecedented, an echo of the Antarctic, or on the brink of an Antarctic ozone hole (e.g., refs. The unusual meteorology of this year has been explored by several studies (6–11).
Polar stratospheric clouds are composed of nitric acid hydrates, liquid solutions of sulfuric acid, water, and nitric acid, and (under very cold conditions) water ice (e.g., ref. Some of the key reactions are photochemical, so that the ozone hole does not form during midwinter when the polar cap is dark, but rather in late winter/spring as sunlight returns, provided that temperatures remain low.
Although the same basic chemical mechanisms operate in both hemispheres, the Arctic winter stratosphere is generally warmer than the Antarctic, and it warms up earlier in the spring.
These two factors taken together explain why ozone depletion in the Arctic is generally much smaller than in the Antarctic.
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