Slashdot Mirror
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."
Do not look at record-setting solar storms with remaining good eye.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
man has yearned to destroy the sun.
I'm done using their Java. Here I come Microsoft.
We'll have to do it at night so it doesn't see it coming.
Recent events have showed us that we MUST cause a regime change for the Solarians. No longer must they live under the titanical rule of Sunddam Hydrogen.
This evil dictator has created weapons of mass destruction, and has used them against nearby planets. A few years ago, we had them open their weapon factories to us so we could be sure they destroyed them all. But it has now come to our attention that they have weapons that could destroy the entire world.
We can NOT stand by and let them do this. We must unite and attack them before they can destroy us. Anyone who is not with us, is with them. There is no other choice.
The Earth must attack Sol.
Would you kindly mod me +1 insightful?
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.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
High in the atmosphere, some oxygen (O2) molecules absorbed energy from the Sun's ultraviolet (UV) rays and split to form single oxygen atoms. These atoms combined with remaining oxygen (O2) to form ozone (O3) molecules, which are very effective at absorbing UV rays. The thin layer of ozone that surrounds Earth acts as a shield, protecting the planet from irradiation by UV light...Ozone is produced naturally in the stratosphere when highly energetic solar radiation strikes molecules of oxygen, O2, and cause the two oxygen atoms to split apart in a process called photolysis.
Linkage
So, yeah, the sun is the bad guy, but really, the sun is the good guy, too. =)
... why I don't believe the "Global Warming is being caused by greedy corporations" spiel..
And what does Global Warming have to do with ozone-layer depletion?
These are two completely seperate phenomena.
quite simply, it's because most people (scientists included) quite simply don't have enough information to say for a FACT that THIS or THAT is causing ozone depletion
Wrong. CFCs do cause ozone depletion. That is established. The mechanisms of how CFCs catalyze the degradation of ozone into oxygen are fully understood. It is something you can easily reproduce in a laboratory. This has been done many times. A Nobel prize was awarded for this. They don't give out Nobels for things which aren't considered to be well-established.
You are confusing this issue with global warming, which is far more controversial, and something which is far less easy to know with certainty.
As for the quote:
"While chlorofluorocarbons are still blamed for ozone depletion, scientists said this study shows they don't properly account for the sun's impact."
It is also correct. But what they are saying is that the extent of ozone destruction due to CFCs wasn't correct before, since they didn't take this factor into consideration. It does not mean that CFCs don't destroy ozone. They do. And it's no theory.
Nonono, we need to invade
- Leon Mergen
http://www.solatis.com
The size of the hole(s) in the ozone layer is not the same problem as global warming. Greenhouse gases are irrelevant.
- Ozone (a molecule with three oxygen atoms) can be broken back down into O2 + O. Like all chemical reactions, this process goes both ways: free oxygen atoms combine into O2, or with O2 to form O3. Ozone in the stratosphere undergoes this process naturally while absorbing UV from the sun.
- Breaking oxygen to form ozone is a slow process as it absorbs energy. Breaking ozone to form oxygen progesses at a much higher rate.
- There's a LOT of oxygen in the atmosphere. The stratosphere reaches an equilibrium where a relatively small amount of ozone breaking down quickly is balanced by a lot more oxygen being photolyzed slowly.
- CFCs break down into chlorine, which catalyzes the O3 -> O2 + 0 reaction. This causes the ozone depletion direction to increase its rate, without an increase in ozone production. Thus, the total amount of ozone will decrease until a new equilibrium is reached at a lower level of ozone.
- Note that the chlorine is a catalyst, and thus is not consumed in the reaction. One chlorine atom can destroy hundreds of thousands of ozone molecules while it's in the stratosphere. So, a relatively small amount of CFCs has a much larger effect on the amount of ozone.
- Cold temperatures favor the ozone depletion direction of the reaction. This is why you see the hole appear first over the southern polar regions. That's the coldest place. Increases in the size of the hole and more northly locations indicate ever dropping levels of ozone across the atmosphere. If you think of the ozone as water in the ocean, then the ozone hole is an island sticking up out of water. Draining water from the entire ocean makes the island bigger, but that doesn't mean the water is only being lost at the island.
- "Ozone depletion deniers" used to exist, much like those that currently object to global warming. They had various objections, such as no known mechanism to transport CFCs released at ground level to the stratosphere. You also used to see a lot of objections that have familiar analogs in the global warming debate -- for instance, suggestion of natural sources such as chlorine from sea salt rather than CFCs. Satellite observations have observed tagged chlorine atoms from CFCs in the stratosphere. We know it's human-produced stuff up there causing problems.
- The chlorine will eventually be removed from the stratosphere as it combines with something other than ozone, though this process isn't as fast as we would like. By ceasing use of CFCs, the chlorine derived from them will eventually go away, and the ozone layer will reestablish at the old equilibrium we used to know and love. Changing human behavior can fix this problem as well as cause it.
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.
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.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
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.
It appears large amounts of discussion here are happening with people not understanding anything at hand. I will attempt to clarify some things to the best of my ability. Please excuse me if this is not as great as it could be, as my source here is my memory augmented by google.
The atmosphere is a very complex thing in both composition and behavior. For purposes of this slashdot discussion, though, about the only important thing about its behavior is that different gases exist in different compositions in different parts of the atmosphere, and these different gases block and reflect different frequencies of radiation. (Most of these gases exist in a cycle, where they are emitted out of the earth, usually by volcanic sources, then slowly fall out of the atmosphere, and are subducted back into the earth, where they're eventually re-emitted.) There are two specific important aspects to this. The first is a layer of ozone which blocks certain higher frequencies of incoming radiation from the sun. The second is a layer of "greenhouse gases" which block a lower frequency. This lower frequency of radiation is not so much important coming from the sun; however, it is important because when radiation hits the earth, it is absorbed and re-emitted as "longwave radiation"-- and this radiation has a frequency such that it is partially blocked by the greenhouse gases, keeping it inside the earth. All of this is very convenient for the forms of life currently common on earth, since the higher frequencies the ozone keeps out are harmful to this life and the lower frequencies the greenhouse gases keep in provide useful heat, keeping the earth from just being a big ball of ice like mars is. Perhaps if the atmosphere were different, life would have evolved differently and less or more heat, or more high-frequency radiation, would not be a bother. But it is the forms of life that live on earth right now we care about, specifically humans.
The ozone layer is the important thing as far as this article goes. The problem is that the ozone layer has been depleting in recent years, starting around World War II, and accelerating in the 60s and 70s. In recent decades the problem has become so bad that the ozone layer actually is developing holes in it, around the north and south poles, mainly the south. This depletion has corresponded with increased levels of chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere. Chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, come from a number of sources. For example volcanoes put out CFCs in great quantity every time they erupt. When placed in the vicinity of certain gases-- specifically the gases found in the ozone layer of the atmosphere-- these CFCs catalyze chemical reactions which destroy ozone, converting it to oxygen. An individual CFC molecule, when it gets into the ozone layer, will thus cause this process pretty much continuously, until like all gases it falls out of the atmosphere. There isn't particularly any question about this, as these processes are easily experimentally reproduced. The other thing that isn't particularly a question is that the increased CFC levels from WWII on were a result of human industrial processes. CFC outputs by human industry after its first uses dwarfed the natural sources of same, leading to a continuous and steady increase in cfc levels far beyond what atmospheric processes are accustomed to. By 1987 it became clear that this human CFC output was having a negative impact on the ozone layer, leading to the adopting of the Montreal Protocol, a treaty which drastically reduced human CFC output with the goal of eliminating human CFC production entirely worldwide by 2010. The impact on CFC levels of the montreal protocol was dramatic and immediate; you can see here yourself that as soon as the significant human CFC sources stopped at the end of the 80s, the steady increase in CFC levels flattened out and became constant. (I am afraid this graph comes from a
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
This is how ozone is made (the "source" reaction):
O2 + UV(180-240nm) -> O* + O*
O* + O2 -> O3
Its famed ability to absorb UV happens this way:
O3 + UV(200-320nm) -> O* + O2
O* + O2 -> O3 (again)
and this is the normal "sink" reaction, which removes the ozone-producing O* radicals from circulation:
O* + O* -> O2
(Another normal "sink" is O* + O3 -> 2O2.)
Normally both the "source" and "sink" reactions are happening at once, so that the concentrations of O3 relative to O2 are at an equilibrium- as much ozone is being produced as destroyed at any given moment.
This is the chlorine breakdown path:
Cl* + O3 -> ClO* + O2
ClO* + ClO* -> Cl2O2
Cl2O2 + UV -> 2Cl* + O2
overall: 2O3 -> 3O2
Cl* is a chlorine radical formed when CFCs break down under intense UV. The chlorine reactions happen at the surface of certain types of ice crystals that form at -80 degrees C. That's where we get the "ozone holes" from.
The overall reaction is an efficient ozone sink, with a rate of reaction 1500 times greater than the one with O*. This pushes the O3/O2 equilibrium downward. More ozone is continually being produced by sunlight hitting O2, but since the O3 is disappearing faster, the result is a much lower concentration of O3 relative to O2 than if no Cl* were present.
This article is so dumbed down as to be worthless. It blames "nitrogen gas", which is a load of crap. This story is about nitric oxide (NO) catalysis. This is a well known phenomenon. In addition to chlorine and nitric oxide, fluorine and bromine can also catalyze the breakdown of ozone. This is how nitrogen oxide breaks down ozone:
NO + O3 -> NO2 + O2
O2 + UV(180-240nm) -> O* + O*
NO2 + O* -> NO + O2 (as opposed to O* + O2 -> O3 which would regenerate the ozone)
Similar reactions happen in reverse near the ground in cities, where the NO2 that emerges from tailpipes results in ground-level ozone.
Normally there's much more NO than chlorine in the stratosphere, although the chlorine reactions are more efficient. Weather patterns above the poles have always brought a steady stream of NO down from the ionosphere to the stratosphere since the beginning of time. In other words the historic, preindustrial "normal" equilibrium concentration of ozone already accounts for what the sun does in a normal solar year. The solar storms of 2003 created an abnormal surge of NO, so we saw ozone drop markedly in spring 2004 relative to 2003. But 2003 levels were already depressed, and we had normal NO levels then.
NO and chlorine are both gradually cleared from the stratosphere by formation of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid respectively. So the supplies of these harmful catalysts have to be regenerated, either by the sun or us. But NO turns to nitric acid after only a couple days. A CFC molecule survives an average of 100 years before degrading to elemental chlorine (destroying ozone) and then HCl. Drops in ozone levels from solar activity can be expected to be transient, lasting a year or two at most. Drops in ozone levels from CFCs are essentially permanent for the rest of our lives. Don't let anyone fool you into thinking all our problems are the sun's fault.