ACP Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ACP 1680-7324 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acp-8-6617-2008 Steady-state aerosol distributions in the extra-tropical, lower stratosphere and the processes that maintain them Wilson J. C. 1 Lee S.-H. 2 Reeves J. M. 1 Brock C. A. 3 Jonsson H. H. 4 Lafleur B. G. 1 Loewenstein M. 5 Podolske J. 5 Atlas E. 6 Boering K. 7 Toon G. 8 Fahey D. 3 Bui T. P. 5 Diskin G. 9 Moore F. 10 Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, University of Denver, Denver, CO, 80208-0177, USA Department of Chemistry, Williams Hall, Kent State University, Kent, OH 44240, USA NOAA ESRL CSD, 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80305, USA CIRPAS/Naval Postgraduate School, Marina, CA 93933, USA NASA Ames Research Center, MS 245-5, Moffett Field, CA 94035-1000, USA University of Miami, 4600 Rickenbacker Causeway, Miami, FL 33149, USA Department of Chemistry, Room 419 Latimer Hall, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1460, USA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, Ca 91109, USA Chemistry and Dynamics Branch, MS 483, NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA 23681, USA NOAA ESRL GMD, 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80305, USA 17 11 2008 8 22 6617 6626 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/8/6617/2008/acp-8-6617-2008.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/8/6617/2008/acp-8-6617-2008.pdf

Measurements of aerosol, N<sub>2</sub>O and OCS made in the Northern Hemisphere below 21 km altitude following the eruption of Pinatubo are presented and analyzed. After September 1999, the oxidation of OCS and sedimentation of particles in the extra-tropical overworld north of 45 N are found to maintain the aerosol in a steady state. This analysis empirically links precursor gas to aerosol abundance throughout this region. These processes are tracked with age-of-air which offers advantages over tracking as a function of latitude and altitude. In the extra-tropical, lowermost stratosphere, normalized volume distributions appear constant in time after the fall of 1999. Exchange with the troposphere is important in understanding aerosol evolution there. Size distributions of volcanically perturbed aerosol are included to distinguish between volcanic and non-volcanic conditions. This analysis suggests that model failures to correctly predict OCS and aerosol properties below 20 km in the Northern Hemisphere extra tropics result from inadequate descriptions of atmospheric circulation.

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