Gravitational separation of Ar/N2 and age of air in the lowermost stratosphere in airborne observations and a chemical transport model

Gravity-induced pressure gradients lead to a small but measurable separation of heavy and light gases by molecular diffusion in the stratosphere. Because the relative abundance of Ar to N-2 is exclusively controlled by physical transport, the argon-to-nitrogen ratio (Ar/N-2) provides an additional constraint on circulation and the age of air (AoA), i.e., the time elapsed since entry of an air parcel into the stratosphere.

Here we use airborne measurements of N2O and Ar/N-2 from nine campaigns with global coverage spanning 2008-2018 to calculate AoA and to quantify gravitational separation in the lowermost stratosphere. To this end, we develop a new N2O-AoA relationship using a Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm. We observe that gravitational separation increases systematically with increasing AoA for samples with AoA between 0 and 3 years.