Measurement of short-lived photochemically-produced species in the stratosphere by solar occultation is difficult because the rapid variation of such species near the terminator introduces ambiguities in interpreting the measured absorption in terms of meaningful atmospheric abundances. These variations produce tangent path concentrations that are asymmetric relative to the tangent point, as opposed to the symmetrical distribution usually assumed in most inversion algorithms. Neglect of this asymmetry may yield an inverted profile that deviates significantly from the true sunset/sunrise profile. In the present paper, the influence of this effect on solar occultation measurements of ClO and NO is examined. Time varying altitude profiles of ClO and NO were calculated with a time-dependent photochemical model to simulate the distribution of these species during a solar occultation measurement. These distributions were subsequently used to calculate simulated radiances for various tangent paths from which mixing ratios were inferred with a conventional technique that assumes spherical symmetry. These results show that neglecting the variation of ClO in the retrieval process produces less that a 10 percent for tangent altitudes above about 35 km for sunrise and sunset; at lower altitudes, the error increases, approaching 100 percent at altitudes near 25 km. The results also show that average inhomogeneity factors, which measure the concentration variation along the tangent path and which can be calculated from a photochemical model, can indicate which species require more careful data analysis.