Quote:Researchers say they have found the first clear evidence that the thinning in the ozone layer above Antarctica is healing. The scientists said that in September 2015 the hole was around 4 million sq km smaller than it was in the year 2000 - an area roughly the size of India.
The gains have been credited to the long term phasing out of ozone-destroying chemicals. The study also sheds new light on the role of volcanoes in making the problem worse.
The natural production and destruction of ozone in the stratosphere balances itself out over long time, meaning that historically there has been a constant level to protect the Earth by blocking out harmful ultraviolet radiation from the Sun.
Its absence increases the chances of skin cancer, cataract damage, and harm to humans, animals and plants.
British scientists first noticed a dramatic thinning of ozone in the stratosphere some 10 kilometres above Antarctica in the mid 1980s.
In 1986, US researcher Susan Solomon showed that ozone was being destroyed by the presence of molecules containing chlorine and bromine that came from chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). These gases were found in everything from hairsprays to refrigerators to air conditioning units.
The reason the thinning was occurring mainly over Antarctica was because of the extreme cold and large amounts of light. These helped produce what are termed Polar Stratospheric Clouds.
In these chilled-out clouds, the chlorine chemistry occurs that destroys the ozone.
Thanks to the global ban on the use of CFC's in the Montreal Protocol in 1987, the situation in Antarctica has been slowly improving.
Several studies have shown ]the declining influence of CFCs, but according to the authors this new study shows the "first fingerprints of healing" and the ozone layer is actively growing again.
Prof Solomon and colleagues, including researchers from the University of Leeds in the UK, carried out detailed measurements of the amount of ozone in the stratosphere between 2000 and 2015.
Using data from weather balloons, satellites and model simulations, they were able to show that the thinning of the layer had declined by 4 million sq km over the period. The found that more than half the shrinkage was due solely to the reduction in atmospheric chlorine.
Normally measurements are taken in October when the ozone hole is at its largest. But this team believed they would get a better picture by looking at readings taken in September, when temperatures are still low but other factors that can influence the amount of ozone, such as the weather, are less prevalent.
"Even though we phased out the production of CFCs in all countries including India and China around the year 2000, there's still a lot of chlorine left in the atmosphere," Prof Solomon told the BBC World Service Science in Action. "It has a lifetime of about 50-100 years, so it is starting to slowly decay and the ozone will slowly recover."We don't expect to see a complete recovery until about 2050 or 2060 but we are starting to see that in September the ozone hole is not as bad as it used to be."
One finding that puzzled researchers was the October 2015 reading that showed the biggest ozone hole on record over Antarctica.The scientists believe that a key contributor to the record hole was volcanic activity.
"After an eruption, volcanic sulphur forms tiny particles and those are the seeds for Polar Stratospheric Clouds," Prof Solomon told Science in Action.
"You get even more of these clouds when you have a recent major volcanic eruption and that leads to additional ozone loss."
"Until we did our recent work no-one realised that the Calbuco eruption in Chile, actually had significantly affected the ozone loss in October of last year."
The study has been hailed as "historically significant" by some other researchers in the field.
"This is the first convincing evidence that the healing of the Antarctic ozone hole has now started," said Dr Markus Rex from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany.
"Right now the state of the ozone layer is still really bad, but I find it very important that we know the Montreal Protocol is working and has an effect on the size of the hole and that is a big step forward."
However others are not entirely convinced that the decline shown in the new study is down to a reduction in the amount of chlorine in the stratosphere.
"The data clearly show significant year to year variations that are much greater than the inferred trends shown in the paper," said Dr Paul Newman from Nasa.
"If the paper included this past year, which had a much more significant ozone hole due to lower wave driven forcing, the overall trend would be less."
Regardless of these questions, the scientists involved in the study believe the ozone story is a great role model for how to tackle global environmental problems.
"It's just been remarkable," said Prof Solomon.
"This was an era in which international co-operation went rather well on some issues. I was inspired by the way the developed and developing countries were able to work together on dealing with the ozone hole," said Prof Soloman.
The study has been published in the journal Science.
We found a problem, addressed it, and nature is recovering. This type of thing has happened again and again. Nature has an amazing propensity for recovery if left to its own devices. This should serve to awaken people to taking steps to allow recovery from climate change, but since that has turned into a political battleground, it won't.
It is a bit ironic that CFCs were banned in 1987 when Reagan was president due to scientists. Yet nowadays when a vast majority of scientists agree on excess global warming from burning fossil fuels, Republicans/conservatives tend to balk at it. Big oil lobby anyone.
(07-02-2016, 12:03 PM)GMDino Wrote: I would hope it would be an end to science deniers.
That's the go-to term for Global Warming cult. And it's hilariously ironic.
I'm not aware of any other scientific field, certainly not recently, so determined and aggressive to shutdown debate, going as far as threatening any challenges to the faith with prison....
^^^and why doesn't THAT scare the hell out of more people?
(07-02-2016, 03:36 PM)GMDino Wrote: It is a fitting term for folks who are willing to ignore the majority of what is out there because at least one other person agrees with them.
Every time I have this debate, and they use the same talking point jabs they've memorized to mock for the purposes of avoiding debate....I tend to find they understand very little of the actual science.
The only thing Global Warming is going to destroy, ultimately, is credibility of science and the public trust of it. Because what you're reading in the papers really isn't science but radical and politicized fear mongering.
The Global Warming cult is all about how we are ruining the planet and all this catastrophe that's going to result from a few degrees of warming (which may or may not happen as a result of man - they STILL really don't know how most of this all works)....and THAT part of the global warming alarmism "story" is completely BS without ANY good science behind it.
(07-02-2016, 03:50 PM)JustWinBaby Wrote: Every time I have this debate, and they usethe same talking point jabs they've memorized to mock for the purposes of avoiding debate....I tend to find they understand very little of the actual science.
The only thing Global Warming is going to destroy, ultimately, is credibility of science and the public trust of it. Because what you're reading in the papers really isn't science but radical and politicized fear mongering.
The Global Warming cult is all about how we are ruining the planet and all this catastrophe that's going to result from a few degrees of warming (which may or may not happen as a result of man - they STILL really don't know how most of this all works)....and THAT part of the global warming alarmism "story" is completely BSwithout ANY good science behind it.
Your anger and ego will always reveal your true self.
There are maps for every day of the year. The last 7 are immediately available. They show that the ozone hole is highly variable and tends to migrate quickly from day to day. This is not my opinion, it is purely observational. Look at the images yourself.
Concluding that it looks highly variable I wanted to see the annual data which has been collected yearly since 1979. The graphs at the bottom of the page represent the average total ozone and average hole area for each year since 1979. Here they are.
OHA = Ozone Hole Are
MO = Minimum Ozone
What observations can we draw from these images:
#1 - The OHA and MO have been statistically static since 1991
#2 - The OHA and MO appear to have a 1 to 1 negative correlation as observed during the spike years. This is expected. The higher the MO the smaller the OHA. (spike years, high daily variability)
#3 - 1988 and 2002 appear anomalous to me. Further study should be done to see if the data should be thrown out for those years. Also they are huge spikes. Are they related to world events? Huge forest fires? Volcanism? They need to be explained or removed.
#4 - 1998, 2001, 2003, 2006, 2008, 2011 and 2015 - all have average hole sizes near the maximum expressed in year 2006.
#5 - The MO graph actually shows a steady and systematic REDUCTION in MO from 2011 till 2015. This is counter to the recent conclusions.
Conclusion:
There is nothing in the long term data measured over 36 years, that would lead me to conclude the Ozone Layer is healing. The conclusions I would draw are as follows:
#1 - It isn't getting worse (yay!)
#2 - There are likely atmospheric controls outside of the influence of CFC's that are also annually affecting the MO and OHA (spike years if the data is real, high daily variability).
(07-02-2016, 03:50 PM)JustWinBaby Wrote: Every time I have this debate, and they use the same talking point jabs they've memorized to mock for the purposes of avoiding debate....I tend to find they understand very little of the actual science.
The only thing Global Warming is going to destroy, ultimately, is credibility of science and the public trust of it. Because what you're reading in the papers really isn't science but radical and politicized fear mongering.
The Global Warming cult is all about how we are ruining the planet and all this catastrophe that's going to result from a few degrees of warming (which may or may not happen as a result of man - they STILL really don't know how most of this all works)....and THAT part of the global warming alarmism "story" is completely BS without ANY good science behind it.
As a Geoscientist I tend to disagree.
In terms of SCIENTIFIC METHODOLOGY, I find that the GW community is doing good science. The problem with it however is the extremely limited dataset. Atmospheric science IS a Geologic Science. The Earth being 4.6 billion years old, it has a long history and much of it we do not understand. Looking back through history we find that the Earth has been much colder and much warmer than we are experiencing now.
Historic data shows that the Earth can heat up and cool down very rapidly, associated with the collapse or re-initiation of the Gulf Stream. This data is also limited to the last 1-2 million years or only 0.04% of earth entire history. Thus to me as a Geoscientist, I do not have problems with the scientific methods themselves, but the application of 150 years of data to draw conclusions about cycles happening on time scales of 20,000, 50,000, 100,000 and 200,000 years.
To me it is bad science, when a Geologic Science ignores Geologic Time.
As a point of interest, I find this quote very interesting.....
Quote:One finding that puzzled researchers was the October 2015 reading that showed the biggest ozone hole on record over Antarctica.The scientists believe that a key contributor to the record hole was volcanic activity.
"After an eruption, volcanic sulphur forms tiny particles and those are the seeds for Polar Stratospheric Clouds," Prof Solomon told Science in Action.
"You get even more of these clouds when you have a recent major volcanic eruption and that leads to additional ozone loss."
Image of total Ozone from June 23, 2016 with location of Mt. Erebus.
I find this......curious......
I have a headache and don't think I could handle going through the data, so I have to ask...
Do you see data in the activity logs and your Ozone hole data that line up and suggest that the hole is directly related to that specific volcano's level of activity ?
(07-02-2016, 06:26 PM)Rotobeast Wrote: I have a headache and don't think I could handle going through the data, so I have to ask...
Do you see data in the activity logs and your Ozone hole data that line up and suggest that the hole is directly related to that specific volcano's level of activity ?
I would not draw that conclusion. It is possible. It is very rare to be able to make definitive statements about Geoscience, which is what always amuses me and makes me skeptical of definitive statements from Atmospheric scientists, who are always wrong more than 5 days into the future.
Geoscience works this way
#1 - Make Observations
#2 - Support the reasoning behind the observations if they are not clear to everyone else
#3 - Draw multiple possible conclusions based upon the observations
#4 - Support the conclusion which best supports the observations
#5 - Discuss why you do not believe the other conclusion you are not supporting
This is basic Geo-scientific Method. With that said, I will make the following observations concerning your question above:
#1 - The part I originally quoted, suggested a Chilean Volcano contributed to the spike in the LARGE size of the OH in 2015.
#2 - Clearly they feel volcanoes can make significant atmospheric contribution to affect the the OH.
#3 - Mount Erebus resides in Antartica, and is within if not directly underneath the OH.
#4 - Mt. Erebus has been erupting continuously since 1972
#5 - Mt. Erebus had a major eruption in 2015
#6 - Mt. Erebus makes a significant contribution to the entirety of the Antarctic atmosphere based upon the study of snow chemistry across the continent and matching it to Mt. Erebus emissions - http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/97JB00155/abstract
#7 - Mt. Erebus emits significant amounts of SO2, HCL and HF which all destroy Ozone - http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/97JB00155/abstract
Conclusion based upon the observations:
It's possible that Mt. Erebus is responsible for the hole in the Ozone over the antarctic and not caused by human influences. However, it is likely a combination of both.
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