The ozone hole breakup in September 2002 as seen by SCIAMACHY on ENVISAT

Abstract

An unprecedented stratospheric warming in the Southern Hemisphere in September 2002 led to the breakup of the Antarctic ozone hole into two parts. The Scanning Imaging Absorption Spectrometer for Atmospheric Chartography (SCIAMACHY) on the European Environmental Satellite (ENVISAT) performed continuous observations of limb-scattered solar radiance spectra throughout the stratospheric warming. Thereby, global measurements of vertical profiles of several important minor constituents are provided with a vertical resolution of about 3 km. In this study, stratospheric profiles of O3, NO2, and BrO retrieved from SCIAMACHY limb-scattering observations together with polar stratospheric cloud (PSC) observations for selected days prior to (12 September), during (27 September), and after (2 October) the ozone hole split are employed to provide a picture of the temporal evolution of the Antarctic stratosphere's three-dimensional structure. © 2005 American Meteorological Society.