Posted on 11/16/2006 3:50:20 PM PST by SF Republican
David Hofman and Susan Solomon, two scientists who had helped alert the world to the existence of a menacing hole in the stratospheric ozone layer above Antarctica, recently reported that this worrisome feature of the atmosphere appears to have stopped widening. After the hole was discovered in 1986, international agreements were reached to end the use of ozone-depleting chemicals (chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs), and these measures may allow the hole to "heal" completely sometime over the next century.
That was a good one here in So Cal. Had some incredible fishing right off the coast. My main complaint, besides ignoring a recent historical Ozone transient, is that they now want 100 years (century) to be proven right. We will all be dead by then anyway. Looks like an argument that will never be proven one way or the other by us.
For crying out loud, can we shove Algore through the "hole" before it finally closes up?
It's illegal to be un-doomed. Give em time, there's more on the way.
This is disturbing.
This mystical ozone hole is, strangely enough, located over Mt. Erebus, a continuously active volcano.
A pity the idiot-savant Karl Rove never mastered that particular trick.
The degradative secret compounds on the nearly invisible high altitude ice crystals that cause chloro-fouro carbons to eat ozone thesis is melting away.
They've even found volcanos that emit flourine, chlorine and bromine ~
Keep that knowledge under your hat, or whatever that thing is the muawiyah wear, or you will be never invited to a cocktail party in NYC again.
Between Mt. Pinataubo and Mt.St.Helena, more "pollutants" were released into the atmosphere than man has done since the invention of fire. But I sure wouldn't mention that, either, or you'll never get another grant.
BTW, and just why do you imagine such earth-shaking scientific info is held to just a "snippet?"
Duh, maybe because it totally discredits the prevailing popular hypothesis ~ and DOW wants it that way, right?
Hmmmm.
They use a lot of chloro-fluoro carbons in producing atom bombs.
NASA and NOAA scientists report this year's ozone hole in the polar region of the Southern Hemisphere has broken records for area and depth. The ozone layer acts to protect life on Earth by blocking harmful ultraviolet rays from the sun. The "ozone hole" is a severe depletion of the ozone layer high above Antarctica. It is primarily caused by human-produced compounds that release chlorine and bromine gases in the stratosphere. Click here for high resolution image of the analysis of the Southern Hemisphere ozone hole as of Oct. 12, 2006.
"From September 21 to 30, the average area of the ozone hole was the largest ever observed, at 10.6 million square miles," said Paul Newman, atmospheric scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. If the stratospheric weather conditions had been normal, the ozone hole would be expected to reach a size of about 8.9 to 9.3 million square miles, about the surface area of North America.
The Ozone Monitoring Instrument on NASA's Aura satellite measures the total amount of ozone from the ground to the upper atmosphere over the entire Antarctic continent. This instrument observed a low value of 85 Dobson Units (DU) on Oct. 8, in a region over the East Antarctic ice sheet. Dobson Units are a measure of ozone amounts above a fixed point in the atmosphere. The Ozone Monitoring Instrument was developed by the Netherlands' Agency for Aerospace Programs, Delft, The Netherlands, and the Finnish Meteorological Institute, Helsinki, Finland.
Scientists from the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., use balloon-borne instruments to measure ozone directly over the South Pole. By Oct. 9, the total column ozone had plunged to 93 DU from approximately 300 DU in mid-July. More importantly, nearly all of the ozone in the layer between eight and 13 miles above the Earth's surface had been destroyed. In this critical layer, the instrument measured a record low of only 1.2 DU., having rapidly plunged from an average non-hole reading of 125 DU in July and August.
"These numbers mean the ozone is virtually gone in this layer of the atmosphere," said David Hofmann, director of the Global Monitoring Division at the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory. "The depleted layer has an unusual vertical extent this year, so it appears that the 2006 ozone hole will go down as a record-setter."
Observations by Aura's Microwave Limb Sounder show extremely high levels of ozone destroying chlorine chemicals in the lower stratosphere (approximately 12.4 miles high). These high chlorine values covered the entire Antarctic region in mid to late September. The high chlorine levels were accompanied by extremely low values of ozone.
The temperature of the Antarctic stratosphere causes the severity of the ozone hole to vary from year to year. Colder than average temperatures result in larger and deeper ozone holes, while warmer temperatures lead to smaller ones. The NOAA National Centers for Environmental Prediction provided analyses of satellite and balloon stratospheric temperature observations. The temperature readings from NOAA satellites and balloons during late-September 2006 showed the lower stratosphere at the rim of Antarctica was approximately nine degrees Fahrenheit colder than average, increasing the size of this year's ozone hole by 1.2 to 1.5 million square miles.
The Antarctic stratosphere warms by the return of sunlight at the end of the polar winter and by large-scale weather systems (planetary-scale waves) that form in the troposphere and move upward into the stratosphere. During the 2006 Antarctic winter and spring, these planetary-scale wave systems were relatively weak, causing the stratosphere to be colder than average.
As a result of the Montreal Protocol and its amendments, the concentrations of ozone-depleting substances in the lower atmosphere (troposphere) peaked around 1995 and are decreasing in both the troposphere and stratosphere. It is estimated these gases reached peak levels in the Antarctica stratosphere in 2001. However, these ozone-depleting substances typically have very long lifetimes in the atmosphere (more than 40 years).
As a result of this slow decline, the ozone hole is estimated to annually very slowly decrease in area by about 0.1 to 0.2 percent for the next five to 10 years. This slow decrease is masked by large year-to-year variations caused by Antarctic stratosphere weather fluctuations.
The recently completed 2006 World Meteorological Organization/United Nations Environment Programme Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion concluded the ozone hole recovery would be masked by annual variability for the near future and the ozone hole would fully recover in approximately 2065.
"We now have the largest ozone hole on record for this time of year," says Craig Long of the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Prediction. As the sun rises higher in the sky during October and November, this unusually large and persistent area may allow much more ultraviolet light than usual to reach Earth's surface in the southern latitudes.
In 2007 NOAA, an agency of the U.S. Commerce Department, celebrates 200 years of science and service to the nation. Starting with the establishment of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1807 by Thomas Jefferson much of America's scientific heritage is rooted in NOAA. The agency is dedicated to enhancing economic security and national safety through the prediction and research of weather and climate-related events and information service delivery for transportation, and by providing environmental stewardship of the nation's coastal and marine resources. Through the emerging Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), NOAA is working with its federal partners, more than 60 countries and the European Commission to develop a global monitoring network that is as integrated as the planet it observes, predicts and protects.
During a get-together in the late '80s, they were all crowing about the ban on the man-made ozone-depleting chemical, Freon, that rose up through the air and had caused the ozone-hole over the South Pole. I said: "You mean the North Pole, don't you?"
They all had a good laugh at their dumb-old-man who had put them through college and who was smiling at them, and said: "No, it's over the South Pole, Dad!"
Then my oldest, my son, said: "OK, Dad, what's the catch?" I said: "The Coriolis Effect." The silence was deafening! The educations had paid off!
For the first time that I could remember, I had rendered my children speechless! It lasted for 10 seconds, and then my son said: "I guess we'll have to bomb Australia, those bastards!"
Then they went back to their tree-huggin', steak-eatin', beer-swillin' ways. Hey, two-outa-three ain't bad. .................FRegards
LOL!
Poor thing!
Keep trying. With any luck, maybe the liberal will wear off! :-)
The problem is that these chlorine particles take a long time to filter out of the stratosphere. A noticable drop should be seen in the next few decades, so don't really have to wait a full century.
If you divide the crap up into different components then it depends. They sure released more ash than humans have. But they emitted a lot less co2 than man, and a lot less to stratospheric chlorine.
Correct. That is the current theory.
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