A Reevaluation of the Ozone Budget with HALOE UARS Data: No Evidence for the Ozone Deficit

Abstract

Recently, additional ozone production mechanisms have been proposed to resolve the ozone deficit problem, which arises from greater ozone destruction than production in several photochemical models of the upper stratosphere and lower mesosphere. A detailed ozone model budget analysis was performed with simultaneous observations of O₃, HCl, H₂O, CH₄, NO, and NO₂ from the Halogen Occultation Experiment (HALOE) on the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) under conditions with the strongest photochemical control of ozone. The results indicate that an ozone deficit may not exist. On the contrary, the use of currently recommended photochemical parameters leads to insufficient ozone destruction in the model.