Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics www.atmos-chem-phys.net 1680-7316 1680-7324 9 9 2009 10.5194/acp-9-3011-2009 http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/9/3011/2009/ http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/9/3011/2009/acp-9-3011-2009.html http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/9/3011/2009/acp-9-3011-2009.pdf 3011 3025 2009-05-11 The governing processes and timescales of stratosphere-to-troposphere transport and its contribution to ozone in the Arctic troposphere Q. Liang Qing.Liang@nasa.gov A. R. Douglass B. N. Duncan R. S. Stolarski J. C. Witte NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Atmospheric Chemistry and Dynamics Branch, Code 613.3, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA Oak Ridge Associated Universities, NASA Postdoctoral Program, Oak Ridge, TN 37831, USA Goddard Earth Sciences & Technology Center, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, MD, USA Science Systems and Applications Inc., Lanham, MD, USA We used the seasonality of a combination of atmospheric trace gases and idealized tracers to examine stratosphere-to-troposphere transport and its influence on tropospheric composition in the Arctic. Maximum stratosphere-to-troposphere transport of CFCs and O₃ occurs in April as driven by the Brewer-Dobson circulation. Stratosphere-troposphere exchange (STE) occurs predominantly between 40° N to 80° N with stratospheric influx in the mid-latitudes (30–70° N) accounting for 67–81% of the air of stratospheric origin in the Northern Hemisphere extratropical troposphere. Transport from the lower stratosphere to the lower troposphere (LT) takes three months on average, one month to cross the tropopause, the second month to travel from the upper troposphere (UT) to the middle troposphere (MT), and the third month to reach the LT. During downward transport, the seasonality of a trace gas can be greatly impacted by wet removal and chemistry. A comparison of idealized tracers with varying lifetimes suggests that when initialized with the same concentrations and seasonal cycles at the tropopause, trace gases that have shorter lifetimes display lower concentrations, smaller amplitudes, and earlier seasonal maxima during transport to the LT. STE contributes to O₃ in the Arctic troposphere directly from the transport of O₃ and indirectly from the transport of NO_y. Direct transport of O₃ from the stratosphere accounts for 78% of O₃ in the Arctic UT with maximum contributions occurring from March to May. 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