Posted on 01/13/2009 12:38:03 PM PST by Red Badger
In a new research, it has been observed that mountain waves in the atmosphere above Antarctica create rare clouds that are helping destroy the ozone layer.
Over the last two decades, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) released by human activity have opened a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica.
Key chemical reactions that lead to ozone depletion happen on the surface of rare polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs), which form high up in the atmosphere.
Here, sunlight breaks down the CFCs into products that react to produce chlorine, which in turn decomposes ozone.
The question was: how are these clouds generated? said Lars Hoffmann of the Julich Research Centre in Germany.
According to a report in New Scientist, Steve Eckermann of the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC, along with Hoffmann and colleagues, used satellite infrared data to study atmospheric temperatures above the Antarctic Peninsula.
They found pockets of high and low temperature air in the stratosphere, and these only occurred above mountains.
The colder pockets fell below -78 degrees Celsius, which is cold enough for PSCs to form.
This implicates so-called mountain waves, which are created when an airstream flows over high relief.
The waves churn up the air high in the atmosphere and appear to create the temperature variations. (ANI)
This is an opportunity to resume nuclear testing — for peaceful purposes, of course.
Shame on us...21+ posts and not ONE:
Bush's Fault
tag....we're beginning to slip, folks.
Republican Penguins use A LOT of air conditioning... AND spray deodorant.
Oh, and its carried upward into the atmosphere in small balsa-wood boxes hanging by threads from foil helium balloons, launched by Republican whales.
It's not silly, anymore. Now it's called 'scientific research'.
Oh yeah, and that Republican walruses drive SUVs.
Better known as "nacreous clouds".
If they called them that, however, then they would have to explain WHY they were first noted BEFORE we had CFCs to release...and also explain WHY they ALSO form in the Arctic regions, rather than being only an Antarctic phenomenon.
I KNEW IT! Damned Arabs fault!
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