Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net 1680-7367 1680-7375 4 3 2004 10.5194/acpd-4-3227-2004 http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/4/3227/2004/ http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/4/3227/2004/acpd-4-3227-2004.html http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/4/3227/2004/acpd-4-3227-2004.pdf 3227 3248 2004-06-16 Extrapolating future Arctic ozone losses B. M. Knudsen bk@dmi.dk S. B. Andersen B. Christiansen N. Larsen M. Rex N. R. P. Harris B. Naujokat Danish Meteorological Institute, Denmark Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Germany European Ozone Research Coordinating Unit, United Kingdom Free University of Berlin, Germany Future increases in the concentration of greenhouse gases and water vapour are likely to cool the stratosphere further and to increase the amount of polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs). Future Arctic PSC areas have been extrapolated using the highly significant trends in the temperature record from 1958–2001. Using a tight correlation between PSC area and the total vortex ozone depletion and taking the decreasing amounts of ozone depleting substances into account we make empirical estimates of future ozone. The result is that Arctic ozone losses increase until 2010–2020 and only decrease slightly up to 2030. This approach is an alternative method of prediction to that based on the complex coupled chemistry-climate models (CCMs).