GALACTIC COSMIC RAYS AND TROPICAL OZONE ASYMMETRIES

Lower stratospheric ozone O-3 is of special interest to climatic studies due to its direct influence on the tropopause temperature, and correspondingly on Earth's radiation balance. By reason of the suppressed dissociation of molecular oxygen by solar UV radiation and the long life span of the lower stratospheric O-3, its temporal variability is usually attributed to atmospheric circulation. Here we report about latitudinal-longitudinal differences in a centennial evolution of the tropical O-3 at 70 hPa. These asymmetries are hardly explicable within the concept of the ozone's dynamical control alone. Analysis of ozone, energetic particles and the geomagnetic records from the last 111 years has revealed that they all evolve synchronously with time. This coherence motivates us to propose a mechanism explaining the geomagnetic and galactic cosmic ray influence on the near tropopause O-3, allowing for an understanding of its spatial-temporal variability during the past century.