TY - JOUR A1 - Ostermöller, Jennifer A1 - Bönisch, Harald A1 - Jöckel, Patrick A1 - Engel, Andreas T1 - A new time-independent formulation of fractional release T2 - Atmospheric chemistry and physics. Discussions N2 - The fractional release factor (FRF) gives information on the amount of a halocarbon that is released at some point in the stratosphere from its source form to the inorganic form, which can harm the ozone layer through catalytic reactions. The quantity is of major importance because it directly affects the calculation of the Ozone Depletion Potential (ODP). To apply FRF in this context, steady-state values are needed, thus representing a molecular property for a given atmospheric situation. In particular, these values should be independent of the tropospheric trends of the respective halogenated trace gases. We analyzed the temporal evolution of FRF from ECHAM/MESSy Atmospheric Chemistry (EMAC) model simulations for several halocarbons and nitrous oxide between 1965–2011 on different mean age levels and found that the current formulation of FRF yields highly time-dependent values. We show that this is caused by the way that the tropospheric trend is handled in the current calculation method of FRF. Taking into account chemical loss in the calculation of stratospheric mixing ratios reduces the time-dependence in correlations of different tracers. Therefore we implemented a loss term in the formulation of FRF and applied the parameterization of a "mean arrival time" to our data set. We find that the time-dependence in FRF can almost be compensated by applying a new trend correction in the calculation of FRF. We suggest that this new method should be used to calculate time-independent FRF, which can then be used e.g. for the calculation of ODP Y1 - 2017 UR - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/44247 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-442474 SN - 1680-7375 N1 - © Author(s) 2016. CC-BY 3.0 License. VL - 17 SP - 1 EP - 18 PB - European Geosciences Union CY - Katlenburg-Lindau ER -