A study of ozone mini-hole formation using a tracer advection model driven by barotropic dynamics

Summary

An ozone mini-hole is a region of strongly depleted column total ozone amounts, associated with the growth of synoptic-scale wave disturbances. Their formation is illustrated here using a sequence of idealised model experiments. Simplified barotropic dynamics are used to drive an ozone tracer advection model on an f-plane representing a hemisphere. Firstly, the Contour Dynamics method is used to integrate the barotropic vorticity equation. Vorticity contours are initialised to simulate typical planetary wave structures and the developing wind field advects components of the ozone model. The vertical profiles of ozone mixing ratio are represented by simple linear functions, separated by a tropopause height field and capped by an upper model boundary. Integrating these profiles thus yields a total column ozone field which is closely dependent on tropopause height. In addition to horizontal advection, a vertical motion parametrisation is included, based on a quasi-geostrophic theory for tropopause displacement. The model is also used to simulate the formation of an actual mini-hole which occurred over northern Europe. Here, observed fields of vorticity, ozone and tropopause height are employed and the system integrated using a pseudo-spectral method. The mini-hole is successfully simulated, despite the simple model dynamics. The results demonstrate the correlation between column total ozone and the tropopause height and confirm the crucial role played by vertical air motions and by the meridional gradients of mid-stratospheric ozone mixing ratios for the formation of ozone mini-holes.