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 Distinguished Research Papers

1. von der Gathen P., et al.: Observational evidence for chemical ozone depletion over the Arctic in winter 1991-92. Nature, 375, 131-134, 1995.

Here we report the results of a new approach to calculate chemical ozone destruction rates that allows us to compare ozone concentrations in specific air parcels at different times, thus avoiding the need to make assumptions about ozone/tracer ratios. For the Arctic vortex of the 1991-92 winter we find that, at 20 km altitude, chemical ozone loss occurred only between early January and mid February and that the loss is proportional to the exposure to sunlight.

2. Adamenko, V.V., Kondratyev, K.Y., Varotsos, C.A.: Climate change in the Arctic and its empirical diagnostics.Energy & Environment, 10 (5): 469-482,1999.

The Hypothesis that global climate warming observed during the last century is due to anthropogenically induced carbon dioxide concentration growth, has provoked controversy. In this context, general considerations are discussed which support the view that the ‘greenhouse’ global warming hypothesis is doubtful. It is concluded that no uncontroversial information exists to support the hypothesis of global ‘greenhouse’ warming.

This paper has been included in the “700 Papers Supporting Climate Realism” by the Committee For A ConstructiveTomorrow (CFACT), Washington D.C:www.cfact.org/2010/04/26/700-papers-supporting-climate-realism/

3. Varotsos C.:The southern hemisphere ozone hole split in 2002:Environ Sci & Pollut Res 9(6): 375-376, 2002.

It was thought, prior to September 2002 that a major stratospheric sudden warming could happen only in the Northern Hemisphere. This paper suggested that both the smaller-sized ozone hole over Antarctica and its splitting into two holestookplace due to an unprecedented major stratospheric sudden warming caused by very strong planetary waves propagated in the Southern Hemisphere.

This paper has been included (after invitation-permission) as the first highlight in Highlights of United NationsEnvironmental Programme: https://scholar.google.gr/scholar?start=0&hl=el&as_sdt=0,5&cluster=4718356445451568378.

4. Varotsos C.: What is the lesson from the unprecedented event over Antarctica in 2002?Environ Sci &Pollut Res 10 (2): 80-81 2003

The analysis performed in this paper showed that the ozone hole split in 2002 occurred not only in the stratosphere but that it has also been extended into the lower altitudes (upper troposphere)

5. Varotsos C.: The extraordinary events of the major, sudden stratospheric warming, the diminutive Αntarcticozone hole, and its split in 2002. Environ Sci & Pollut Res11(6): 405-411, 2004.

This follow-up paper on this subject has been identified by Thomson-ISI to be one of the most cited recent papers in thefield of Environment/Ecology (see the commentary at: http://archive.is/zXLhZ)

6. Varotsos C.: Power-law correlations in column ozone over Antarctica. International Journal of RemoteSensing, 26, pp. 3333–3342, 2005.

This paper shows that processes based on the nonlinear nature of the atmospheric dynamics could probably address the question “What caused the southern hemisphere to exhibit very strong planetary waves in 2002?”The evidence is based on the new finding that the fluctuations of the total ozone content over Antarctica exhibit long-range correlations

7. Varotsos C., Ondov J., Efstathiou M.: Scaling properties of air pollution in Athens, Greece and Baltimore, Maryland.Atmos. Environ. 39 (22): 4041-4047, 2005.

This paper suggests that air pollution exhibits scaling effect. More precisely, persistent long-range power-law correlations were detected in the fluctuations of daytime / nighttime O3 and NOx with lag times ranging from 4 days to 5 years with more intense correlations (“stronger memory”) during daytime. Persistent long-range power-law correlations were also detected for PM10 and PM2.5 fluctuations in Athens and East Baltimore.

8. Varotsos, C., Kirk-Davidoff, D.: Long-memory processes in ozone and temperature variations at the region 60 S–60N. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 6(12), 4093-4100, 2006.

The columnar ozone and tropospheric temperature fluctuations in small time-intervals were found in this paper to be positively correlated to those in larger time-intervals in a power-law fashion.

This paper has been identified by Thomson-ISI to be “Emerging Research Front paper in the field of Geosciences” (see the interview at: http://archive.sciencewatch.com/sciencewatch/dr/erf/2011/11augerf/11augerfVaro/)

(http://archive.sciencewatch.com/dr/erf/2011/11augerf/)

9. “Weather” (Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society) commented on the papers:

  • Cracknell A.P., Varotsos C.A.: New aspects of global climate-dynamics research and remote sensing.International Journal of Remote Sensing, Vol. 32, 579-600, 2011. 

  • Varotsos, C.A., Tzanis, C.: A new tool for the study of the ozone hole dynamics over Antarctica.AtmosphericEnvironment, 47, 428-434, 2012.

The first paper describes how new research tools in physics may be used to achieve a better understanding of the variability of the climate system. (“New tools for global climate-dynamics research”, Weather – October 2011, Vol. 66, No. 10, doi:10.1002/wea.712).

The second paper has tackled what is described as the truism that time poses one of the greatest challenges to climate evolution. It suggests that rather than analyzing various climate parameters in the conventional time domain, a new not-continuous time domain termed natural time should be used. Then novel dynamical features hidden behind time series can emerge and impending major events in climate system can be predicted. (“A new time domain for prediction of impending major climate events”, Weather – February 2012, Vol. 67, No. 2, doi:10.1002/wea.1848).

10. Lovejoy, S., Varotsos, C. Scaling regimes and linear/nonlinear responses of last millennium climate to volcanicand solar forcings.Earth System Dynamics, 7(1), 133-150 2016.

This study suggests that at scales much longer than the deterministic predictability limits (about 10 days), the statistics of the atmosphere undergoes a drastic transition, the high-frequency weather acts as a random forcing on the lower-frequency macroweather. To clarify the validity of the linearity assumption and determine its scale range, we use last millennium simulations, with both the simplified Zebiak–Cane model and the NASA GISS E2-R fully coupled GCM.

  

Additional papers that have mostly attracted the interest of the international community

  1. Kondratyev, K. Y., and Varotsos, C.: Atmospheric greenhouse effect in the context of global climate change. Il Nuovo Cimento C, 18(2), 123-151, 1995.
  2. Chandra S., Varotsos C. and Flynn L.E.: The mid-latitude total ozone trends in the northern hemisphere. Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 23, No. 5, 555-558, 1996.
  3. Rex, M., et al: In-situ measurements of stratospheric ozone depletion rates in the Arctic Winter 1991/92: ALagrangian Approach. J. Geophys. Res., V 103, D5, 5843-5853, 1998.
  4. Ziemke J.R., Chandra S., Herman J. and Varotsos C.: Erythemally weighted UV trends over northern latitudesderived from Nimbus 7 TOMS measurements. J. Geophys. Res., 105, D6, 7373-7382, 2000.
  5. Schulz A., et al: Match observations in the Arctic winter 1996/97: High stratospheric ozone loss rates correlatewith low temperatures deep inside the polar vortex. Geophys. Res. Let., Vol. 27, No 02, p.205-208, 2000.
  6. Schulz A., et al: Arctic ozone loss in threshold conditions: Match observations in 97/98 and 98/99. J. Geophys. Res. 106, D 7495-7503, 2001.
  7. Varotsos C. et al.: On the seasonal variation of the surface ozone in Athens, Greece. Atmospheric Environment, Vol. 35, 315-320, 2001.
  8. Varotsos C. et al..: The long-term coupling between column ozone and tropopause properties. J Climate 17 (19): 3843-3854, 2004.
  9. Varotsos C.: Atmospheric pollution and remote sensing: implications for the Southern hemishere ozone holesplit in 2002 and the Northern mid-lattitude ozone trend. Advance in Space Research 33 249-253 2004.
  10. Ferm, M., De Santis, F., & Varotsos, C.: Nitric acid measurements in connection with corrosion studies. Atmospheric Environment, 39(35), 6664-6672, 2005..
  11. Varotsos, C.:Airborne measurements of aerosol, ozone, and solar ultraviolet irradiance in the troposphere. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 110(D9), 2005.
  12. Varotsos, C. et al..: Long-term memory effect in the atmospheric CO2concentration at Mauna Loa. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 7(3), 629-634, 2007.
  13. Varotsos, C. et al.: An observational study of the atmospheric ultra-fine particle dynamics. Atmospheric Environment, 59, 312-319, 2012
  14. Varotsos, C. A.; Lovejoy, S.; Sarlis, N. V.; et al. On the scaling of the solar incident flux, Atmospheric Chemistry andPhysics, 15 Issue: 13 Pages: 7301-7306, 2015.
  15. Varotsos, C. A.; Efstathiou, M. N.; Cracknell, A. P. Sharp rise in hurricane and cyclone count during the lastcentury, , 119, 3-4,: 629-638, 2015.
  16. Varotsos, C A.; Efstathiou, M N. Symmetric scaling properties in global surface air temperature anomalies, Theoretical and Applied Climatology 121 Issue: 3-4, 767-773, 2015.
  17. Varotsos, C A. et al. On the progress of the 2015-2016 El Nino event, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 16 (4),2007-2011, 2016.
  18. Varotsos, C. A., Efstathiou, M. N., & Cracknell, A. P.: On the temporal evolution of the tropical stratospheric ozone.Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, 157, 1-5, 2017.
  19. Varotsos, C. A., & Ghosh, S.: Impacts of climate warming on atmospheric phase transitionmechanisms.Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 130(3-4), 1111-1122, 2017.
  20. Christodoulakis, J., Varotsos, C. A., Cracknell, A. P., & Kouremadas, G. A.: The deterioration of materials as a resultof air pollution as derived from satellite and ground based observations.Atmospheric Environment, 185, 91-99, 2018