Apportionment of long-term trends in different sections of total ozone column over tropical region

The additive time-series decomposition analysis was performed on National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet Instrument Merge satellite dataset version 8.6 for the period January 1979 to December 2019 with an objective to detect and apportion long-term trends present in the total ozone column (TOC) and the long-term trends exist in the respective ozone contents present in the vertical sub-columns constituting the TOC viz. upper, middle and lower stratosphere as well as near-surface for the tropical region. Linear regression analysis was performed on the deseasonalized monthly mean time series of TOC and corresponding ozone contents present in each partitioned layer for three different time spans, viz. 1979–2019 (complete time series), 1979–1998 (pre-inflection years), and 1999–2019 (post-inflection years), where 1998 was taken as inflection year. For the complete time-series, statistically significant negative trends were observed in TOC and corresponding ozone contents in the sub-columns over most of the tropical region. Expectedly, during pre-inflection years, strong negative trends were noted for TOC and ozone contents in the partitioned vertical layers. In contrast, during the post-inflection year time span, long-term trends in TOC were statistically insignificant over two-third of the tropical region, but one-third of the subtropical region exhibited negative trends in TOC. During this time span, positive trends were observed in the ozone contents present in the upper stratospheric sub-column. However, negative trends in ozone contents persisted in the middle and the lower stratosphere. It was interesting to note that the ozone contents confined in near-surface layer manifested strong negative trends during pre-inflection years and the same reversed into strong positive trends that in post-inflection span. The observed, contrasting, long-term trends and variability in the respective partitioned layer of the TOC confounded any clear sign of recovery in the TOC over the tropical region. The continuation of declining trends in the middle stratosphere and increasing trends in the near-surface layer of ozone contents is a matter of concern.