Abstract. The implicit time integration scheme of Stott and Harwood (1993) was proposed as an efficient scheme for use in three-dimensional chemical models of the atmosphere. The scheme was designed for chemistry schemes using `chemical families', in which species with short lifetimes are grouped into longer-lived families. Further study with more complex chemistry, more species and reactions showed the scheme to be non-convergent and unstable under certain conditions; particularly for the perturbed chemical scenarios of polar stratospheric winters. In this work the scheme has been improved by revising the treatment of families and the convergence properties of the scheme. The new scheme has been named IMPACT (IMPlicit Algorithm for Chemical Time-stepping). It remains easy to implement and produces simulations that compare well with integrations using more accurate higher order schemes.

Key words: Atmospheric composition and structure (middle atmosphere - composition and chemistry; lioposphere - composition and chemistry; instruments and techniques)