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Severe Arctic Ozone Loss
iONiUM writes
"The BBC reports that 'Ozone loss over the Arctic this year was so severe that for the first time it could be called an "ozone hole" like the Antarctic one, scientists report. About 20km (13 miles) above the ground, 80% of the ozone was lost, they say. The cause was an unusually long spell of cold weather at altitude. In cold conditions, the chlorine chemicals that destroy ozone are at their most active.' This is the first time in observational history that the Arctic ozone has been depleted to such extensive levels (abstract). This will mean high UV problems for Russia, Greenland and Norway."
Note to self... Don't sun-bathe in the arctic... and wear layers.
Honestly though, it's been a while since I've seen much news about the Ozone layer. I hope people haven't forgotten that the damage done (or being done) is a problem.
Oh yes, 2005. And 1999-2000. And the world completely failed to end. In fact everything was back to normal in a few years. Well since the environuts have lost the polar bear debate, I guess now we have to worry about the big bad Northern Ozone Hole coming and killing us in our sleep. But hey make up your mind, is this Arctic cold snap caused by Global Warming too, or what?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The air has been exceptionally cold up there? Where is all that global warming everyone is speaking about?
My American mind doesn't trust the scientific integrity of this article.
Carbon, you are out. Green = low chlorine footprint.
Now what do I have to stop doing to fix this?
Paul: Father... father, the sleeper has awakened! - Dune
The concentrations of O3 in question are quite small. Would manufacturing (or capturing surface ozone, which is a pollutant when here with us surface dwellers) O3, lofting tanks on high altitude balloons over the poles and releasing it help?
I realize how insane this sounds.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
It was a Nature article. The Weather Underground has a thoughtful discussion.
Be a lot sloweR Mi8e of decay, for a moment and
Why is this being reported now? The ozone depletion is a springtime phenomenon. The high exposure to UV at high latitudes would be experienced during the late spring and summer.
For lack of a better sig, this one has to do.
"Troll" does not mean "that with which I disagree"
It means "That which you do not believe but are saying just to get a rise out of people"
As opposed to flamebait, "That which you know will lead only to a flamewar but which you say anyway"
Now, you could argue that my comment above is flamebait, but there is no way in which it is a troll, because PHYSICS WORKS.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Let me guess...the unusually cold temperatures were caused by global warming...lol
Exactly we have been forced to buy poor quality under powered cars (there was a hybrid built in Canada in 1926 that got 56 mi/gal) at a ridiculous price because it is the only way to afford to drive. Meanwhile we see that the people telling us it is good we can't afford to buy my gas for a larger vehicle because we are saving the environment are the ones driving the fancy cars and flying their jets because their emissions are ok . Meanwhile the ones telling us what to do for our own good are the ones over charging us for fuel, shitty cars and electricity. They are charging us more money for less product and laughing all the way to the dealership to buy another fuel guzzling car because they can now afford to own one more car. And hey since we don't pollute as much they can pollute more now.
From TFA: "In cold conditions, the chlorine chemicals that destroy ozone are at their most active." This is wrong, because chemical reactions slow as temperatures decrease. It is an axiom in chemistry that the rate of the reaction halves (or doubles) for each 10 degree C drop (or increase) in temperature. A far as I can tell, there has been no high altitude sampling that has detected any CFCs in the Artic. This is just more environmental fear mongering and finger pointing without scientific proof.
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
WTF? So we banned CFCs in the 80s to save the ozone layer but in a cruel twist of fate the increase in CO2 causes the air down here to get warmer and the air way up there to get colder and that makes the CFCs more efficient and therefore better at destroying the ozone? Yeah? So we are supposed to... do... what? How do we know that banning all carbon would not have some other unforeseen issue? These people have no idea what they are talking about or they do but are not saying anything productive. It will be news if one of these guys knew how to fix any of this mess or had something productive to say. The truth is that we are fracked no matter what and we should really focus upon what we will leave in the fossil record and enjoy the time we have left!
http://www.noaa.gov/features/02_monitoring/arctic_thinning.html
The "coldness" of the pole is related to the strength of the winds (polar vortex) around the pole in the atmosphere. The south pole generally has strong winds circling it, which works to cut off the south pole's atmosphere from the rest of the world, especially during the southern hemisphere winter. Part of the reason for a stronger vortex is due to ocean surrounding the south pole on all sides, with land masses far away. In addition, the southern hemisphere in general has more ocean compared to land than the northern hemisphere.
In the northern hemisphere, the polar vortex generally has more waves or pertubations in the polar vortex, which help to mix in air from lower latitudes. Some of this is caused by planetary waves that propagate vertically in the atmosphere. These planetary waves are formed generally due to land masses and mountains affecting the atmospheric flow (not this simple but this is the general idea). Generally, the factor that causes the difference in the north and south polar vortices is land mass.
Now relating this all to climate is a bit tricky. It has been seen that as the troposphere warms (lowest layer of the atmosphere), the stratosphere cools. This has been seen in observations in the last 30-50 years (you may argue that 50 years might not be enough to define a long-term trend). The reason for this cooling is basically radiative balance (though I'm oversimplifying it here). If the troposphere warms due to increased greenhouse gasses, then the atmosphere above must cool above it. There cannot be more heat coming in than is leaving the Earth. A good analog to this is Venus. Venus has huge concentrations of greenhouse gasses. We know its surface is very hot (over 400 degrees C), while its upper atmosphere is much cooler than Earth's (gets down below -110 degrees C, compared to about -80 C on Earth).
The tough part is separating the stratospheric cooling due to greenhouse gasses and ozone destruction from CFCs (although we may know this answer once all the CFCs are out of the atmosphere in the future). Increased greenhouse gasses will warm the troposphere and cool the stratosphere. This will lead to more polar stratospheric clouds, leading to more reactions sites for ozone destruction. More ozone destruction means less UV light is absorbed by ozone in the stratosphere. Less UV absorption means a cooler stratosphere which further intensifies the problem.
How about 30 seconds with google before flinging your "bullshit" around?
> This is wrong, because chemical reactions slow as temperatures decrease.
It's surface chemistry on ice, so the reaction won't happen at all until it
gets cold enough to make ice condense out of that dry stratospheric air.
http://www.theozonehole.com/ozonedestruction.htm
> A far as I can tell, there has been no high altitude sampling that has detected any CFCs in the Artic
It's been going on at least a decade. First page of search results:
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~beckya/nobackup/Stratospheric%20paper%20(GRL).pdf
"Isotopic measurements (O and O) of CO along with
concentration measurements of SF, CClF (CFC-11), CClF (CFC-12) and
CClFCClF (CFC-113) in stratospheric samples collected within the
Arctic polar vortex are reported."
Don't just explain a new observation with a few quips. I can do that too: Cold air more dense than hot - should cause thermals which will cause more mixing, leading to a more uniform distribution of heat in the atmosphere - not increased stratification. There. Now remember, it's not fair to say my hypothesis is less valid than yours because they are both pulled out of someones ass. They shouldn't make such claims without a reasonably validated mathematical model.
You are referring to room temperature reactions in which your rule of thumb is generally true. Chlorine, however, is a free radical that at roughly -80C one chlorine radical breaks down hundreds of thousands of ozone molecules when the wind conditions create intense collisions. SInce ozone holes are not new, what is unknown is how severly the ozone layer depleted without the presence of chlorine. The good thing is that in warmer conditions when UV rays hit the upper atmosphere's oxygen molcules, ozone is created. The ozone layer is a self healing system. Move along. Nothing to see here.
The CFCs are still a problem that had lessened, but because of abnormal temperatures in the Arctic, their remaining effects were magnified a great deal.
Someone just needs to get a really big tube and suck the air out of the mega cities like New York, LA, Chicago and Goose Creek, South Carolina and pump all that ozone saturated air into the polar regions.
Yeah, I know... can't be done- it's just sad how our world is seeing ozone missing where it is needed- and causing harm where it isn't.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Ozone depletion leads to surface cooling.
Sounds like we just solved global warming!
I'm going to go buy sunscreen and parkas.
The question becomes, what is normal?
Is it natural for this layer to fluctuate in this way and what are the unintended consequences of making changes.
Just because we haven't seen it in our lifetime doesn't mean it isn't a natural reoccurrence every so many YYYY years.
For example, maybe the Earth retracts the ozone to react to changes in the quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere in order to melt the ice caps faster to dilute the ocean so it can trap more CO2. By stopping this process we could unintentionally oversaturate the oceans and suffocate ourselves.
All I'm saying is, this requires more in-depth research before just tossing a solution out there and hoping we didn't make a mistake.
Really if you want to learn something do a bit of Googleing...
For example, see
http://www.ace.uwaterloo.ca/arcticozonedecline.html
Go buy yourself a new bottle of sunscreen. Other than that, who gives a fuck other than the environazis and PETA-morons?
IIRC, The North and South poles create a magnetosphere (shield) around the globe which protects us from cosmic rays (and to a large extent, gamma rays created through solar flare activity).
The magnetosphere attracts electrons from the cosmic rays which enter the earth's atmosphere at the poles. It is at the poles where the electrons react with molecules in the atmosphere to produce the Northern Lights.
Question is: Is it possible for Pole Shift activity to affect the location of the Ozone hole? If so, that would seem to suggest that the Ozone hole is going to get dragged around relative to Pole Shift.
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The Science News story has some words of caution of equating this 'hole' to the Antarctic hole:
(sorry, Slashdot still protects us against dangerous quotation marks)
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Didn't we fix this problem by getting rid of CFC's or something?
What we are "supposed to do" is just wait.
the ban only took effect in 1996 (phasing out was started in 1991), with some CFCs (CFC-13, 111, 112, various halon variants, etc.) only getting fully eliminated last year.
The issue is that CFCs are very long lived. It takes decades for them to break down. We won't really start seeing the effect of the bans on the ozone layer for another 20-30 years. Until then, we just have to deal with it.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
It was my understanding that cold air was rushing out of the Arctic due to global warming. Now this article says that this is a result of the ozone getting too cold?
... this proves that the ozone problem is bipolar.
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
wherein swirling holes of stratospheric cold freeze the Earth -- The Day After Tomorrow?
Vision with execution is hallucination.
No problem. The Canadian Government has already thought of the solution. They are firing all the scientists researching the ozone hole.
No scientists. No knowledge of the ozone hole. No problem.
Go Conservatives Go!
Attach electric arc ozone generators to all commercial airliners at 30k feet, that should provide a much needed O3 boost, and help ensure the major polluters are doing something constructive to off set their evil ways.
What hole? Do you mean the Arctic hole that was healed by the super beings known as the Humaniods from the planet Sol? The gods of this galaxy? Get with the times baby.
Why is there a UV problem at NIGHT? Does the Arctic ozone hole reach to latitiudes where the sun rises at that time of year?
This is not an intentional troll. I just don't understand why this is considered to be a problem.
--
Sometimes I stare into space and it doesn't recognize me. - P S Mueller