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

Re:One more reason...

[bigtallmofo]

You would find an article in the latest Scientific American interesting:

How Did Humans First Alter Global Climate?. It's a controversial theory how humans have been altering the global climate for thousands of years, since the invention of clear-cutting forests for agricultural purposes. I found it a very interesting read, especially the theory presented by the author (here comes a troll modding for even parroting this theory) that early humans have actually caused us to avoid an ice age because of their global warming activities.

Re:Who'da thunk it?

[Brandybuck]

Actually, it's the anti-environmental lobby that latches onto the natural cycles argument, using it as an excuse to do nothing.

They're not using it an excuse to do nothing, intead they are using it as an excuse not to crawl back into the cro magnon cave the crawled out of! Environmentalists are against technological progress. When Al Gore advocated banning the internal combustion engine he was proposing just that. Gasoline engines may not be perfect, but until we have viable replacements for them, banning them is not an intelligent solution.

There is not "anti-environmental" lobby, but there certainly is an "anti-environmentalist" lobby. Like it or not, environmentalism is a specific political ideology. Not everyone who wants to protect the environment is an environmentalist. Not everyone who wants to eliminate pollution is an environmentalist. Pretending that wanting to clean up the Earth is environmentalism is as silly as pretending that wanting to eliminate poverty is socialism.

Re:Solar Radiation quite calm

[L0C0loco]

As a coauthor of that paper, I must agree that the press release was dumbed down quite a bit. Unfortunately, it has to be that way in order to get any widespread attention by the media. So be it. The problem I have with the /. article here is that the submitter tries to tie the changes at high altitude seen last year to the current problem over northern Europe which is caused by the formation of a significant ozone hole over the Arctic. These are completely different phenomena and unrelated. On the subject of chlorine, the amounts of chlorine are coming down and ozone is indeed responding as expected (google search on newchurch ozone for the paper and press release - I was a coauthor on that one as well). Depending upon how old you are and how quickly methane increases over the next few decades, you will probably live to see ozone recover to very near its historical norm. The thing that alarms me most at this point in time is the use of methylbromide. Most of the world is curtailing its use. The US was beginning to until compliance was set aside by the current administration. Bromine has a much larger impact on ozone than does either NOx or ClOx. Its use in the US is in large part due to the strawberry industry.

Enjoy,