Meridional distribution of tropospheric ozone from measurements aboard commercial airliners

Abstract

Aboard commercial airliners twenty registrations of the ozone concentration of the upper troposphere were carried out within a period of 14 months between Europe and South Africa. Nearly each of these meridional ozone profiles shows an approximately constant ozone content between 25°S and 25°N with a pronounced seasonal variation. Most of these profiles show two marked peaks of the ozone concentration at about 30°N and between 40° and 45°N. Though the number of these registrations is not sufficient for statistical computations, the first results confirm the meridional ozone distribution, which was expected from studies with ozone-radiosonde soundings. Moreover a strong asymmetry of the northern and southern hemisphere is confirmed by these ozone measurements.