Stratospheric minor species vertical distributions during polar winter by balloon borne UV-Vis spectrometry

A light, relatively cheap and easy to operate balloonborne UV-visible spectrometer was designed for investigating ozone photochemistry in the Arctic winter. The instrument was flown 11 times during the European Arctic Stratospheric Ozone Experiment (EASOE) in winter 1991-92 in Northern Scandinavia. The first simultaneous measurements of vertical distributions of aerosols, PSC's, O3, NO2 and OClO inside the vortex during flight no. 6 on 16 January, in cold conditions are reported, which show that nitrogen oxides were almost absent (lower than 100 ppt) in the stratosphere below 22 km, while a layer of relatively large OClO concentration (15 ppt) was present at the altitude of the minimum temperature.