ACP Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ACP 1680-7324 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acp-6-2231-2006 Detection and measurement of total ozone from stellar spectra: Paper 2. Historic data from 1935–1942 Griffin R. E. M. 1 Department of Earth and Space Sciences and Engineering, York University, 4700Keele Street, Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3, Canada, and Herzberg Institute forAstrophysics, 5071 West Saanich Road, Victoria, BC, V9E 2E7, Canada 21 06 2006 6 8 2231 2240 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/6/2231/2006/acp-6-2231-2006.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/6/2231/2006/acp-6-2231-2006.pdf

Atmospheric ozone columns are derived from historic stellar spectra observed between 1935 and 1942 at Mount Wilson Observatory, California. Comparisons with contemporary measurements in the Arosa database show a generally close correspondence, while a similar comparison with more sparse data from Table Mountain reveals a difference of ~15–20%, as has also been found by other researches of the latter data. The results of the analysis indicate that astronomy's archives command considerable potential for investigating the natural levels of ozone and its variability during the decades prior to anthropogenic interference.

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