Possible climatic implications of depletion of Antarctic ozone.

The total amount of ozone overhead in late winter and early spring has decreased considerably during the past decade. Recent satellite data confirm that the column abundances of ozone at Antarctica are among the lowest recorded anywhere on the globe. Our radiative-convective model calculations demonstrate that this depletion of Antarctic ozone could lead to a surface cooling of about 0.47^oK which is in contrast to that observed from climatological temperature records. This calls for a detailed investigation of the air chemistry in relation to dynamic- radiative balance for the Antarctica atmosphere.-Authors Centre for Atmos Sci, Indian Inst of Tech, Hanz Khas, New Delhi-110016, India.