Study of the photochemistry of ozone has been an important subject ever since it was realized that the protection from ultraviolet radiation afforded by ozone in the upper atmosphere is of more than academic interest. Only since the early 1970's has public awareness reached the point where newspapers routinely carry stories about possible ozone depletion in various regions of the atmosphere. With the recognition of the Antarctic ozone hole and the newly published report on significant world wide ozone reduction, the need to improve our understanding of all ozone related processes has been dramatically underscored. It is important to understand all the sources of ozone production, because to the extent that there may be sources that are not included in the models, the loss mechanisms could be even more significant than has been assumed. Current atmospheric models of the upper stratosphere and the mesosphere are not able to predict ozone concentrations as large as are observed. This project will experimentally examine the hypothesis that photodissociation of vibrational excited molecular, oxygen, created in the dissociation of ozone, may provide an auto-catalytic source of ozone in the upper atmosphere. Confirmation of the hypothesis could resolve the current discrepancy of the models with observations.
