Hemispheric asymmetry in recent stratospheric age of air changes

Dubé, Kimberlee; Tegtmeier, Susann; Ploeger, Felix; Walker, Kaley A.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-1433-2025

Articles | Volume 25, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-1433-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-1433-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 25, issue 2

Research article

|

31 Jan 2025

Research article |

| 31 Jan 2025

Hemispheric asymmetry in recent stratospheric age of air changes

Kimberlee Dubé, Susann Tegtmeier, Felix Ploeger, and Kaley A. Walker

Data sets

Mean age of air anomaly derived from ACE-FTS N2O Kimberlee Dube, Susann Tegtmeier, Felix Ploeger, Kaley Walker https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11492264

Level 2 Data, Version 4.1/4.2 ACE-FTS https://databace.scisat.ca/level2/

Nitrous Oxide (N2O) -- Combined Dataset NOAA/GML https://gml.noaa.gov/hats/combined/N2O.html

Model code and software

Code used in "Hemispheric asymmetry in recent stratospheric age of air changes" Kimberlee Dube https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13952201

LOTUS Regression Code R. Damadeo et al. https://github.com/usask-arg/lotus-regression

Short summary

The transport rate of air in the stratosphere has changed in response to human emissions of greenhouse gases and ozone-depleting substances. This transport rate can be approximated using measurements of long-lived trace gases. We use observations and model results to derive anomalies and trends in the mean rate of stratospheric air transport. We find that air in the Northern Hemisphere aged by up to 0.3 years per decade relative to air in the Southern Hemisphere over 2004–2017.