The planetary waves in total ozone over Antarctica

An investigation was made into the characteristic features of the signature of the quasi‐stationary planetary waves in ozone over Antarctica during recent years, where the Antarctic ozone hole exhibits peculiar behaviour. To this end, mean monthly ozone data, collected by the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) flown on the Earth‐Probe satellite over 75.5°S during September of four successive years (2000–2003), were used. Planetary waves in total ozone seem to have been much stronger during 2002 than during the other years investigated. The latter agrees fairly well with the substantial reduction in the spatial extent of the polar vortex and the limited ozone hole size in 2002.