ANALYSIS OF THE 8-YEAR TREND IN OZONE DEPLETION FROM EMPIRICAL-MODELS OF SOLAR BACKSCATTERED ULTRAVIOLET INSTRUMENT DEGRADATION

A new class of explicitly empirical models have been developed that produce a better fit to all of the SBUV solar flux data. The models have a single free parameter to separately specify the diffuser plate and spectrometer degradation. This parameter must be within a narrow range to bring the calculated ozone trend into approximate agreement with data from the Dobson network, Solar Mesospheric Explorer (SME) and Stratospheric Aerosol Gas Experiment (SAGE) satellites, or with the different trends reported from the Umkehr ground stations. A correction factor is given as a function of time and altitude that brings the SBUV data into approximate agreement with SAGE, SME, and Dobson ozone trends. In our opinion, the currently archived SBUV ozone data should be used with caution for periods of analysis exceeding 1 year, since it is likely that the yearly decreases contained in the archived data are too large. -from Authors