Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Change
Susan Solomon Group
This page is under-construction, and will continue to be updated with more content.
The Solomon group uses the Whole Atmosphere Community Model, a state-of-art global chemistry climate model spanning the troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere and lower thermosphere. We contribute to understanding the chemistry and climate impacts of polar ozone depletion in collaboration with colleagues at NCAR and other institutions.
Comparison of Antarctic ozone hole for 2018 & 2019
Credit: NCAR Atmospheric Chemistry Observations & Modeling
For more information on NCAR and the WACCM model, along with feature research, please visit this link
The Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model (WACCM) models atmospheric chemistry over the globe. This simulation shows the evolution of the ozone hole over the South Pole side-by-side during the two periods of August 1 - September 15 for the years 2018 and 2019. The 2019 ozone hole was rather unusual, and was analyzed by atmospheric scientists using atmospheric models and satellite observations. The pressure level 50 hPa corresponds to about 18 km, or 60,000 feet above sea level. This animation was produced at NCAR/ACOM by Simone Tilmes and Carl Drews.
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Publications written using WACCM data can be
The MIT general circulation model (MITgcm) models CFC-11 over the global ocean. This simulation shows (at right) the ocean column integrated CFC-11 over time, and (at left) the total CFC-11 lifetime considering both the atmosphere and ocean sinks. Changes in ocean uptake/outgas rate translate time-dependence in CFC-11 lifetime.
MIT general circulation model (MITgcm)
Publication "On the effects of the ocean on atmospheric CFC-11 lifetimes and emissions" published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Credit: Peidong Wang & MIT News
Scripts and Datasets for Filliing in Dobson Total Ozone Records
In the 1980s, measurements at the British Antarctic Survey station in Halley, Antarctica led to the discovery of the ozone hole. The Halley total ozone record continues to be uniquely valuable for studies of long-term changes in Antarctic ozone. Environmental conditions in 2017 forced a temporary cessation of operations, leading to a gap in the historic record. In Zhang et al. (2021), we developed and tested a method for filling in the Halley record using satellite data and find evidence to further support ozone recovery.
Zhang et al. (2021) is available at this link.
The following github links to the scripts used and the resulting completed Dobson datasets.
Scripts that calculate stratospheric tropical widths from tracer concentrations using the 1σ and GWL metrics. Separate scripts are provided for calculating widths from 3-D (longitude x latitude x pressure) and zonal mean (latitude x pressure) data.
For full details about the methods, please see Shah et al. (2020)
Scripts for Calculating the Width of the Tropics using Atmospheric Tracers