Sun Storms Deplete Ozone, Too

An anonymous reader writes "Turns out the sun itself zaps the ozone that protects us from the sun. LiveScience is reporting that the record-setting string of solar storms around Halloween in 2003 (including an X28 flare) set off a cascade of events that depleted the ozone layer over the Arctic in early 2004. In a nutshell, more nitrogen was created, and an unusually strong vortex of high-speed winds aloft brought the nitrogen down, where it contributed to cutting ozone by 60 percent over the polar region. In January, the a European scientist warned residents of the far north to basically stay out of the sun. While chlorofluorocarbons are still blamed for ozone depletion, scientists said this study shows they don't properly account for the sun's impact."

Comments

Who'da thunk it?

[DesScorp]

Wow....massive environmental changes can be caused by...OTHER ENVIRONMENTAL changes!

This has been my biggest gripe with environmental groups. Almost none of them take into account the fact that the Earth has radically "re-organized" itself (for lack of a better word) several times BEFORE man ever came along, and we don't yet understand how or why. We've had several radical changes in global temperature, sea levels, atmosphere composition, etc, most before man ever walked the Earth.

Re:Who'da thunk it?

[rhysweatherley]

"Wow....massive environmental changes can be caused by...OTHER ENVIRONMENTAL changes! This has been my biggest gripe with environmental groups. "

Actually, it's the anti-environmental lobby that latches onto the natural cycles argument, using it as an excuse to do nothing. Because doing something usually costs them money, or results in lawsuits, or whatever.

Environmentalists understand that there are natural cycles but are concerned that the natural cycles are being upset by human action in ways that will be very difficult to reverse the longer the upset occurs.

The Sun's involvement in ozone depletion has been a fixture of atmospheric conditions for millions of years, and has reached equillibrium. Inject human-generated CFC's and the equillibrium is upset. We can't change the Sun, but we can change the human factors.

my response

[Khashishi]

It's ok that the Earth radically re-organized itself in the distant past before humans came along.

It's not ok from a human standpoint for the Earth to radically re-organize itself now.

Really, we should do everything in our power to keep the Earth rather like it has been for the last 10000 years.

The more things change,the more they stay the same

[suitepotato]

Think for a second... Has anyone PROVEN that there has EVER been an "ozone hole" ANYWHERE but at the poles? Like right over ANY of the industrialized nations that emit CFCs?

Not to my knowledge or in any scholarly tract I have ever seen.

It took until NOW for someone to think, "Hmmm... maybe the sun has something to do with the ozone layer..."

The idea that a dynamic world affecting power source could create AND destroy isn't new. Witness the ring of fire in the Pacific Ocean. Subduction destroys, magma release renews.

One wonders how any could miss the fact that the known ozone depletion spots happen to coincide with the planet's magnetic poles and thus where loads of solar charged particle radiation ends up, having to pass through the same ozone that the sun itself created.

This isn't a troll. This is simple exasperation at the endless "human kind is responsible for all ills that plague the world". I'm sure superstitious islanders of the nineteenth century who survived Krakatoa agreed with that, but it ain't necessarily so.

There seems to be some obsession among some people with the idea that everything should always remain as it is right now despite the fact that our own science proves to us that the world was different in multiple different ways over vast periods of time before we were ever a kink in the dna and logically will be short of our intelligent intervention and massive effort.

My question:

[djward]

In January, the a European scientist warned residents of the far north to basically stay out of the sun.

In January, residents of the far north have no choice but to stay out of the sun.

No wonder no one took him seriously.