Recent trends in stratospheric ozone - Implications of ozone and temperature correlation

The relation between ozone and temperature in the upper stratosphere is used to estimate the drift in the SBUV spectrometer on Nimbus-7 and the linear trend in ozone from 1979 to 1986. The ozone and temperature variabilities are coupled through chemical and dynamical processes. In the upper stratosphere they are anticorrelated through temperature-dependent loss rates, while in the lower stratosphere their variabilities are positively correlated through dynamical coupling. These relations are used to determine the ozone sensitivity to temperature and ozone trends in terms of temperature trends. It is shown that in the upper stratosphere (approximately 2 mbar), the eight-year trend in ozone is a manifestation of dynamical perturbations. It varies from about +4 percent at the equator to about -1 to -2 percent at high latitudes in both hemispheres.