Investigating the Arctic ozone hole
The RECONCILE project was established to address the issues surrounding arctic stratospheric ozone loss and climate change with the aid of laboratory and field experiments, together with microphysical and chemical transport models. The consortium will test key processes and extend them to large-scale chemistry climate models (CCMs), thereby improving prediction of ozone loss above the Arctic and interaction with climate change.Project partners will also investigate chlorine oxides and bromine oxides chemistry in order to reduce uncertainties concerning the rate of catalytic ozone loss. RECONCILE will in addition study the importance of chlorine on aerosol particles and the possible consequences for stratospheric ozone on a global scale.Consortium members will try to determine how nitric acid trihydrate nucleation leads to polar stratospheric cloud formation, particularly the role of meteorite dust. Scientists will also investigate the mixing and transport of processed air to lower latitudes in order to fully understand and correctly represent them in global transport models.Researchers will investigate the dynamic microphysical and chemical processes behind stratospheric polar ozone loss in order to increase the available knowledge. This data will be used by the RECONCILE consortium to decide and define reliable parameters for the ozone depletion process and implement them in a global CCM. The updated global CCM will be used to carry out simulations of past and future ozone trends in order to determine the impact of new process parameters when compared to reference simulations. In addition, scientists will evaluate the success of the model in reproducing observed ozone trends.Work conducted by the RECONCILE project will therefore help to fill in current gaps in scientific knowledge regarding the ozone hole above the Arctic and its effect on climate change.>
