Cooling can increase springtime ozone destruction by extending cold conditions favourable for polar stratospheric clouds, stratospheric chlorine activation and dimer stability. Removal of reactive nitrogen into settling particles can delay chlorine nitrate reformation. With sunlight and substantial available chlorine, the active period can become longer or stronger. Vortex breakup, transport and the declining halogen inventory also matter, so a colder year does not determine the ozone loss by temperature alone.
First, weakly absorbing sulfate scatters shortwave electromagnetic radiation and tends to cool the surface/planetary energy budget, with magnitude and sign influenced by cloud background and particle optics. Second, sulfate can supply cloud condensation nuclei: at fixed cloud water, more activated droplets give smaller droplets and greater cloud albedo through the Twomey effect; atmospheric precipitation and water-content adjustments can modify that idealized cooling. Third, sulfate particles change atmospheric composition through uptake, aqueous chemistry and heterogeneous surface reactions, with their acidity and available reactants controlling what is converted. Particle surfaces alone do not guarantee polar-style stratospheric chlorine activation in an ordinary tropospheric cloud.[ref]