Protection without poison: why tropical ozone maximizes in the interior of the atmosphere

Match, Aaron; Gerber, Edwin P.; Fueglistaler, Stephan

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-4349-2025

Articles | Volume 25, issue 8

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-4349-2025

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-4349-2025

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

Articles | Volume 25, issue 8

Research article

|

22 Apr 2025

Research article |

| 22 Apr 2025

Protection without poison: why tropical ozone maximizes in the interior of the atmosphere

Aaron Match, Edwin P. Gerber, and Stephan Fueglistaler

Download

Final revised paper (published on 22 Apr 2025)
Preprint (discussion started on 06 Jun 2024)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2024-1552', Kris Wargan, 07 Jul 2024

Mt review is in the attached PDF.

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-1552-RC1
RC2: 'Comment on egusphere-2024-1552', Anonymous Referee #2, 10 Sep 2024

See attached file

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-1552-RC2
AC1: 'Response to reviewers for egusphere-2024-1552', Aaron Match, 21 Oct 2024

We thank the reviewers for their constructive comments, significant revisions in response to which have strengthened the manuscript. Our full Response is attached.

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-1552-AC1

Peer review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision | EF: Editorial file upload

AR by Aaron Match on behalf of the Authors (21 Oct 2024) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (04 Nov 2024) by Jens-Uwe Grooß

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (26 Nov 2024)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Comments on

Protection without poison: Why tropical ozone maximizes in the
interior of the atmosphere

by

Aaron Match, Edwin P. Gerber, and Stephan Fueglistaler

I see that this paper has seen a lot of work in response to the first
set of reviews; a new Figure (7) was added and the figures and numbers
in this paper have been recalculated based on the most recent kinetic
information. Congratulations to accomplishing this work. Further, many
minor modifications were also made.

I suggest accepting this paper for ACP in its present form.

I have a very few comments (see below) that the authors might want to
consider when producing a revised form of this paper.

* I like the idea of using SWOOSH in place of MERRA-2 (and I agree the
changes are minor). But I think the paper is clearer in this way.

* I also like the idea removing the troposphere from the figures.

* Oy is defined in Brasseur and Solomon (2005). Indeed, it is not
uncommon (for certain applications) to have more species
contributing to Ox than just O3 and O. However, I suggest adding the
Oy fedinition to this paper, so that people do not have to look
up the Oy definition in the book by Brasseur and Solomon (2005).

* regarding the Cariolle coefficients, I agree with you that they
should nor be published with out his explicit consent. Perhaps there
is a chance that D. Cariolle eventually agrees to his values being published.

* Regarding Dobson: While he measured total ozone in many locations
globally, for some time he estimated the peak of the ozone layer to
be above 30 km. These estimates can be found in his old papers. Of
course his book was later.

* You mention in your reply that it is not impossible to consider
temperature as a function of altitude. Perhaps this point could
briefly be mentioned in the paper (rather than making the
assumption"isothermal" right away.

Hide

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (26 Nov 2024) by Jens-Uwe Grooß

AR by Aaron Match on behalf of the Authors (04 Dec 2024) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

The ozone concentration in the tropical stratosphere peaks at 26 km, protecting life from harmful ultraviolet light without poisoning it. Climate models reproduce this peak, but textbook explanations yield errors of 10 km. Simplifying the well-understood sources and sinks of ozone, we develop a theory explaining that tropical ozone peaks where its dominant sink transitions from damping of atomic oxygen aloft (mainly via catalytic chemistry) to damping of ozone below (mainly via transport).