Boundary of nighttime ozone chemical equilibrium in the mesopause region: long-term evolution determined using 20-year satellite observations

Abstract

The assumption of nighttime ozone chemical equilibrium (NOCE) is widely employed for retrieving the Ox-HOx components in the mesopause from rocket and satellite measurements. In this work, the recently developed analytical criterion of determining the NOCE boundary is used (i) to study the connection of this boundary with O and H spatiotemporal variability based on 3D modeling of chemical transport and (ii) to retrieve and analyze the spatiotemporal evolution of the NOCE boundary in 2002–2021 from the SABER/TIMED dataset. It was revealed, first, that the NOCE boundary reproduces well the transition zone dividing deep and weak photochemical oscillations of O and H caused by the diurnal variations of solar radiation. Second, the NOCE boundary is sensitive to sporadic abrupt changes in the middle-atmosphere dynamics, in particular due to powerful sudden stratospheric warmings leading to the events of an elevated (up to ∼ 80 km) stratopause, which took place in January–March 2004, 2006, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2018, and 2019. Third, the space–time evolution of this characteristic expressed via pressure altitude contains a clear signal of an 11-year solar cycle in the 55∘ S–55∘ N range. In particular, the mean annual NOCE boundary averaged in this range of latitudes anticorrelates well with the F10.7 index with the coefficient of −0.95. Moreover, it shows a weak linear trend of 56.2±42.2 m per decade.