ACP Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ACP 1680-7324 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acp-4-1085-2004 Secondary maxima in ozone profiles Lemoine R. 1 Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium, 3, Avenue Circulaire, 1180 Brussels, Belgium 08 07 2004 4 4 1085 1096 This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This article is available from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/4/1085/2004/acp-4-1085-2004.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/4/1085/2004/acp-4-1085-2004.pdf

Ozone profiles from balloon soundings as well as SAGEII ozone profiles were used to detect anomalous large ozone concentrations of ozone in the lower stratosphere. These secondary ozone maxima are found to be the result of differential advection of ozone-poor and ozone-rich air associated with Rossby wave breaking events. The frequency and intensity of secondary ozone maxima and their geographical distribution is presented. The occurrence and amplitude of ozone secondary maxima is connected to ozone variability and trend at Uccle and account for a large part of the total ozone and lower stratospheric ozone variability.