During the northern burning season, biomass burning is found north of the equator, while satellite estimates from the residual-type method such as the CCD method show higher ozone south of the equator. This discrepancy is called the tropical Atlantic paradox (Thompson et ai., 2000). We use satellite and ground-based measurements to investigate the paradox. When the background tropospheric ozone over the Pacific Ocean from TOMS measurements is subtracted from the latitudinal total ozone distribution (e.g. TOMS-Pacific method), the results show remarkable agreement with the latitudinal stratospheric ozone distribution using the CCD method. The latitudinal tropospheric ozone distribution using the CCD method, with a persistent maximum over the southern tropical Atlantic, is also seen in the latitudinal tropospheric ozone distribution using the TOMS-Pacific method. It suggests that the complicated CCD method can be replaced by the simple TOMS-Pacific method. However, the tropical Atlantic paradox exists in the results of both the CCD and TOMS-Pacific methods during the northern buming season. In order to investigate this paradox, we compare the latitudinal ozone distributions using the CCD and TOMS-Pacific methods by using the SAGE measurements (e.g. TOMS-SAGE method) and the SHADOZ ozonesoundings (e.g. TOMS-Sonde method) assuming zonally invariant stratospheric ozone, which is the same assumption as of the CCD method. During the northern burning season, the latitudinal distributions in the tropospheric ozone derived from the TOMS-SAGE and TOMS-Sonde methods show higher tropospheric ozone over the northern tropical Atlantic than the southern Atlantic due to a stronger gradient in stratospheric ozone relative to that from the CCD and TOMS-Pacific methods. This indicates that the latitudinal tropospheric ozone distribution can be changed depending on the data that is used to determine the latitudinal stratospheric ozone distribution. Therefore, there is a possibility that the north-south gradient in stratospheric ozone over the Atlantic can be a solution of the paradox.