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The 2022 eruption of the Hunga Tonga‐Hunga Ha'apai volcano caused substantial impacts on the atmosphere, including a massive injection of water vapor, and the largest increase in stratospheric aerosol for 30 years. The Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) Limb Profiler instrument has been critical in monitoring the amount and spread of the volcanic aerosol in the stratosphere. We show that the rapid imagery from the OMPS instrument enables a tomographic retrieval of the aerosol extinction that reduces a critical bias of up to a factor of two, and improves vertical structure and agreement with coincident lidar and occultation observations. Due to the vertically thin and heterogeneous nature of the volcanic aerosol, this impacts integrated values of aerosol across latitude, altitude, and time for several months. We also investigate the systematic impact of uncertainty in assumed particle size that result in an underestimation of the aerosol extinction at the peak of the volcanic aerosol layer. Plain Language Summary The Hunga Tonga‐Hunga Ha'apai volcano erupted in 2022. The eruption plume went higher into the atmosphere than ever observed before in the modern age. It also carried large amounts of water vapor and other gases and particles, called aerosols, into the stratosphere. The NASA satellite instrument, called the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) Limb Profiler, has given us valuable measurements of these aerosols, which are helpful in understanding the impact the volcanic eruption might have on climate. We use an advanced technique to analyze the OMPS measurements that provides a clearer view of the plume. This analysis gives somewhat different results about the thickness of the volcanic plume than the standard method. Key Points Tomographic retrievals reduce a critical bias in Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite Limb Profiler volcanic aerosol extinction, improving agreement with Cloud‐Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation and Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III/International Space Station Biases of up to a factor of two extend beyond the early plume, with zonal, temporal, and altitude integrated values affected for months Uncertainty in particle size distribution also has an impact that should be considered when analyzing aerosol loading

Tetranychus urticae is one of the most important pests of many species of economically important crops, cultivated both under cover and in open ground. Feeding T. urticae reduces the size and quality of the yield. Nowadays, in connection with the popularization of organic farming and the green order policy, non-chemical methods that provide an effective reduction in the harmfulness of this spider mite are sought. The aim of the study is to present the current state of knowledge on methods of reducing the undesirable effects of T. urticae feeding. The paper discusses the main directions of searching for biopesticides against T. urticae and provides a list of natural components on which commercially available products are based. The aspect of using the natural properties of plants, micro- and macro-organisms is presented. The paper also deals with the issue of the spread of spider mites in connection with the observed climate changes.

Massive Australian wildfires lofted smoke directly into the stratosphere in the austral summer of 2019/20. The smoke led to increases in optical extinction throughout the midlatitudes of the southern hemisphere that rivalled substantial volcanic perturbations. Previous studies have assumed that the smoke became coated with sulfuric acid and water and would deplete the ozone layer through heterogeneous chemistry on those surfaces, as is routinely observed following volcanic enhancements of the stratospheric sulfate layer. Here, observations of extinction and reactive nitrogen species from multiple independent satellites that sampled the smoke region are compared to one another and to model calculations. The data display a strong decrease in reactive nitrogen concentrations with increased aerosol extinction in the stratosphere, which is a known fingerprint for key heterogeneous chemistry on sulfate/H₂O particles (specifically the hydrolysis of N₂O₅ to form HNO₃). This chemical shift affects not only reactive nitrogen but also chlorine and reactive hydrogen species and is expected to cause midlatitude ozone layer depletion. Comparison of the model ozone to observations suggests that N₂O₅ hydrolysis contributed to reduced ozone, but additional chemical and/or dynamical processes are also important. These findings suggest that if wildfire smoke injection into the stratosphere increases sufficiently in frequency and magnitude as the world warms due to climate change, ozone recovery under the Montreal Protocol could be impeded, at least sporadically. Modeled austral midlatitude total ozone loss was about 1% in March 2020, which is significant compared to expected ozone recovery of about 1% per decade.

The Australian bushfires around the turn of the year 2020 generated an unprecedented perturbation of stratospheric composition, dynamical circulation and radiative balance. Here we show from satellite observations that the resulting planetary-scale blocking of solar radiation by the smoke is larger than any previously documented wildfires and of the same order as the radiative forcing produced by moderate volcanic eruptions. A striking effect of the solar heating of an intense smoke patch was the generation of a self-maintained anticyclonic vortex measuring 1000 km in diameter and featuring its own ozone hole. The highly stable vortex persisted in the stratosphere for over 13 weeks, travelled 66,000 km and lifted a confined bubble of smoke and moisture to 35 km altitude. Its evolution was tracked by several satellite-based sensors and was successfully resolved by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts operational system, primarily based on satellite data. Because wildfires are expected to increase in frequency and strength in a changing climate, we suggest that extraordinary events of this type may contribute significantly to the global stratospheric composition in the coming decades.The 2019/2020 Australian wildfires generated a smoke cloud that organized itself into a persistent vortex structure and ascended to 35 km altitude through solar heating, according to satellite tracking.

Field experiments (in the 2019–2021) were carried out at the Department of Field Experimentation of the Institute of Plant Protection—National Research Institute in Winna Góra, the purpose of which was to test the insecticidal and acaricidal effectiveness of sugar beet cultivation protection against Tetranychus urticae and to assess its impact on the size and quality of the sugar beet crop. In the experiment, the following acaricides were used: spirodiclofen—240 g—22.11%, mixture of hexythiazox—250 g—23.15% and fenpyroximate—51.2 g—5.02% and insecto-acaricide paraffin oil—770 g L−1 (89.6%) and abamectine—18 g—1.88%. The controls were plants left without chemical protection. The plants were sprayed when ten mobile individuals/two spotted spider mites appeared on the leaves. Chemical treatments were carried out in the full growing season in the phase of leaf rosette formation (July–August). In the second half of October, the plant density (PD) in the field was estimated. Parameters characterizing the size and quality of the crop were calculated: sugar beet yield (SBY), biological sugar yield (BSY), pure sugar yield (PSY), sugar content (SC), refined of sugar content (RSC), the yield of preferential sugar (YPS), recoverable sugar (RS), potassium molasses (PM), sodium molasses (SM), α-amino nitrogen (α-AN), alkalinity factor (AF) and standard molasses losses (SML). The years were statistically significantly different for all 13 traits. Statistical differences were observed in the mean values of the observed parameters in these years, except for α-amino nitrogen (α-AN) and alkalinity factor (AF). The mean values of SBY, biological sugar yield (BSY), pure sugar yield (PSY) and sodium molasses (SM) differed depending on the type of protection applied. Positive correlations were observed for 28 pairs of traits, but negative statistically significant relationships were observed between 11 pairs of traits. The first two canonical variates accounted for 85.49% of the total variability between the individual combinations. The significant positive relationship with the first canonical variate was found for PD, BSY, PSY, SC, RSC, YPS, but negative for SM. The CV2 was negatively correlated with: SBY, BSY, PSY, RS, PM, SM, α-AN and SML. The greatest variation in terms of all the 13 traits jointly was found for Vertigo 018 EC in 2020 and Vertigo 018 EC in 2021. The greatest similarity was found between control in 2019 and Ortus 05 SC in 2019.

Measurements of limb-scattered sunlight from the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite Limb Profiler (OMPS-LP) can be used to obtain vertical profiles of ozone in the stratosphere. In this paper we describe a two-dimensional, or tomographic, retrieval algorithm for OMPS-LP where variations are retrieved simultaneously in altitude and the along-orbital-track dimension. The algorithm has been applied to measurements from the center slit for the full OMPS-LP mission to create the publicly available University of Saskatchewan (USask) OMPS-LP 2D v1.0.2 dataset. Tropical ozone anomalies are compared with measurements from the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS), where differences are less than 5 % of the mean ozone value for the majority of the stratosphere. Examples of near-coincident measurements with MLS are also shown, and agreement at the 5 % level is observed for the majority of the stratosphere. Both simulated retrievals and coincident comparisons with MLS are shown at the edge of the polar vortex, comparing the results to a traditional one-dimensional retrieval. The one-dimensional retrieval is shown to consistently overestimate the amount of ozone in areas of large horizontal gradients relative to both MLS and the two-dimensional retrieval.

Isentropic mixing across and above the subtropical jet is a significant mechanism for stratosphere–troposphere exchange. In this work, we show new observational evidence on the role of this process in moistening the lowermost stratosphere. The new measurement, obtained from the Spatial Heterodyne Observations of Water (SHOW) instrument during a demonstration flight on the NASA's ER-2 high-altitude research aircraft, captured an event of poleward water vapour transport, including a fine-scale (vertically <∼1 km) moist filament above the local tropopause in a high-spatial-resolution two-dimensional cross section of the water vapour distribution. Analysis of these measurements combined with ERA5 reanalysis data reveals that this poleward mixing of air with enhanced water vapour occurred in the region of a double tropopause following a large Rossby wave-breaking event. These new observations highlight the importance of high-resolution measurements in resolving processes that are important to the lowermost-stratosphere water vapour budget.

A small long-term drift in the Optical Spectrograph and Infrared Imager System (OSIRIS) stratospheric ozone product, manifested mostly since 2012, is quantified and attributed to a changing bias in the limb pointing knowledge of the instrument. A correction to this pointing drift using a predictable shape in the measured limb radiance profile is implemented and applied within the OSIRIS retrieval algorithm. This new data product, version 5.10, displays substantially better both long- and short-term agreement with Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) ozone throughout the stratosphere due to the pointing correction. Previously reported stratospheric ozone trends over the time period 1984–2013, which were derived by merging the altitude–number density ozone profile measurements from the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment (SAGE) II satellite instrument (1984–2005) and from OSIRIS (2002–2013), are recalculated using the new OSIRIS version 5.10 product and extended to 2017. These results still show statistically significant positive trends throughout the upper stratosphere since 1997, but at weaker levels that are more closely in line with estimates from other data records.

After decades of depletion in the 20th century, near-global ozone now shows clear signs of recovery in the upper stratosphere. The ozone column, however, has remained largely constant since the turn of the century, mainly due to the evolution of lower stratospheric ozone. In the tropical lower stratosphere, ozone is expected to decrease as a consequence of enhanced upwelling driven by increasing greenhouse gas concentrations, and this is consistent with observations. There is recent evidence, however, that mid-latitude ozone continues to decrease as well, contrary to model predictions. These changes are likely related to dynamical variability, but the impact of changing circulation patterns on stratospheric ozone is not well understood. Here we use merged measurements from the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment II (SAGE II), the Optical Spectrograph and InfraRed Imaging System (OSIRIS), and SAGE III on the International Space Station (SAGE III/ISS) to quantify ozone trends in the 2000–2021 period. We implement a sampling correction for the OSIRIS and SAGE III/ISS datasets and assess trend significance, taking into account the temporal differences with respect to Aura Microwave Limb Sounder data. We show that ozone has increased by 2 %–6 % in the upper and 1 %–3 % in the middle stratosphere since 2000, while lower stratospheric ozone has decreased by similar amounts. These decreases are significant in the tropics (>95 % confidence) but not necessarily at mid-latitudes (>80 % confidence). In the upper and middle stratosphere, changes since 2010 have pointed to hemispheric asymmetries in ozone recovery. Significant positive trends are present in the Southern Hemisphere, while ozone at northern mid-latitudes has remained largely unchanged in the last decade. These differences might be related to asymmetries and long-term variability in the Brewer–Dobson circulation. Circulation changes impact ozone in the lower stratosphere even more. In tropopause-relative coordinates, most of the negative trends in the tropics lose significance, highlighting the impacts of a warming troposphere and increasing tropopause altitudes.

Trends in stratospheric trace gases like HCl, N.sub.2 O, O.sub.3, and NO.sub.y show a hemispheric asymmetry over the last 2Ãádecades, with trends having opposing signs in the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere. Here we use N.sub.2 O, a long-lived tracer with a tropospheric source, as a proxy for stratospheric circulation in the multiple linear regression model used to calculate stratospheric trace gas trends. This is done in an effort to isolate trends due to circulation changes from trends due to the chemical effects of ozone-depleting substances. Measurements from the Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment Fourier Transform Spectrometer (ACE-FTS) and the Optical Spectrograph and InfraRed Imager System (OSIRIS) are considered, along with model results from the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model (WACCM). Trends in HCl, O.sub.3, and NO.sub.y for 2004-2018 are examined. Using the N.sub.2 O regression proxy, we show that observed HCl increases in the Northern Hemisphere are due to changes in the stratospheric circulation. We also show that negative O.sub.3 trends above 30ÇëhPa in the Northern Hemisphere can be explained by a change in the circulation but that negative ozone trends at lower levels cannot. Trends in stratospheric NO.sub.y are found to be largely consistent with trends in N.sub.2 O.