Routine ground-based measurements of total ozone column (TOC), as well as ozone profile soundings started in the late 1960s in Germany. The resulting ozone and temperature records at Hohenpeissenberg and Berlin / Potsdam / Lindenberg show long-term changes similar to other stations in Central Europe, and to the changes seen globally. Following the increase of ozone depleting substances (ODS), stratospheric ozone has declined from the 1960s until the 1990s. Since about 2000, ozone has leveled or slightly increased, consistent with declining amounts of ODS. The stratosphere has been cooling and the troposphere has been warming, in agreement with general expectations due to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. The clearest signs of recovering ozone are seen around 40 km altitude. Two factors contribute to this increase: the decrease of stratospheric chlorine loading and cooling of the upper stratosphere, which slows gas-phase ozone destruction cycles, and enhances the ter-molecular reaction producing ozone. Tropospheric ozone has increased substantially from the 1960s to the early 1990s. Since then, it has remained more or less constant, on a level higher compared to the 1960s and 1970s. Particularly low tropospheric ozone was observed in 2020, due to reduced precursor emissions during the COVID-19 related lockdowns. The atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will likely continue to rise, while the concentrations of ozone depleting substances are expected to slowly decline. To see how the atmosphere responds, and to help understand future changes, continued monitoring will be required for many years to come, both over Germany and worldwide.

Throughout spring and summer 2020, ozone stations in the northern extratropics recorded unusually low ozone in the free troposphere. From April to August, and from 1 to 8 kilometers altitude, ozone was on average 7% (~4 ppbv) below the 2000 to 2020 climatological mean. Such low ozone, over several months, and at so many stations, has not been observed in any previous year since at least 2000. Atmospheric composition re-analyses from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service and simulations from the NASA GMI model indicate that the large 2020 springtime ozone depletion in the Arctic stratosphere has contributed less than one quarter to the observed tropospheric anomaly. The observed anomaly is consistent with two recent model simulations, which assume emission reductions similar to those caused by the COVID-19 crisis. COVID-19 related emission reductions appear to be the major cause for the observed low free tropospheric ozone in 2020.

Recent research has put in evidence the self-lofting capacity of smoke aerosols in the stratosphere and their self-confinement by persistent anticyclones, which prolongs their atmospheric residence time and radiative effects. By contrast, the volcanic aerosols-composed mostly of non-absorptive sulphuric acid droplets-were never reported to be subject of self-lofting nor of dynamical confinement. Here we use high-resolution satellite observations to show that the eruption of Raikoke volcano in June 2019 produced a long-lived stratospheric anticyclone containing 24% of the total erupted mass of sulphur dioxide. The anticyclone persisted for more than 3 months, circumnavigated the globe three times, and ascended diabatically to 27 km altitude through radiative heating of volcanic ash contained by the plume. The mechanism of dynamical confinement has important implications for the planetary-scale transport of volcanic emissions, their stratospheric residence time, and atmospheric radiation balance. It also provides a challenge or “out of sample test” for weather and climate models that should be capable of reproducing similar structures.

The Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III on the International Space Station (SAGE III/ISS) was launched on February 19, 2017 and began routine operation in June 2017. The first two years of SAGE III/ISS (v5.1) solar ozone data were evaluated by using correlative satellite and ground-based measurements. Among the three (MES, AO3, and MLR) SAGE III/ISS solar ozone products, AO3 ozone shows the best accuracy and precision, with mean biases less than 5% for altitudes ~15–55 km in the mid-latitudes and ~20–55 km in the tropics. In the lower stratosphere and upper troposphere, AO3 ozone shows high biases that increase with decreasing altitudes and reach ~10% near the tropopause. Preliminary studies indicate that those high biases primarily result from the contributions of the oxygen dimer (O) not being appropriately removed within the ozone channel. The precision of AO3 ozone is estimated to be ~3% for altitudes between 20 and 40 km. It degrades to ~10–15% in the lower mesosphere (~55 km), and ~20–30% near the tropopause. There could be an altitude registration error of ~100 meter in the SAGE III/ISS auxiliary temperature and pressure profiles. This, however, does not affect retrieved ozone profiles in native number density on geometric altitude coordinates. In the upper stratosphere and lower mesosphere (~40–55 km) the SAGE III/ISS (and SAGE II) sunset ozone values are systematically higher than sunrise data by ~5–8% which are almost twice larger than what observed by other satellites or model predictions. This feature needs further study.