Those who think man-made climate change is fiction, consider this -- the ozone layer over the Arctic has thinned by a record 40% this winter. The United Nation's World Meteorological Organization said that's 10% more thinning compared to the previous season.
"The Arctic stratosphere continues to be vulnerable to ozone destruction caused by ozone-depleting substances linked to human activities," the U.N. weather agency's secretary-general Michel Jarraud said.
The ozone layer is crucial because of keeps ultraviolet radiation from the sun from reaching earth. The thinner the layer, the more rays that get through. Chemicals in air pollutants can eat away at the ozone. The U.N. said very cold weather also contributed to the record thinning.
"This is pretty sudden and unusual," said Bryan Johnson, an atmospheric chemist who works in the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado.
Johnson said even though this is limited to the Arctic right now, there's the concern that "if this were to happen every year — even though the ozone naturally regenerates itself — you might see a trending downward of the atmospheric ozone layer."
Warnings about the ozone layer were first raised in the early 1970s, leading to a 1987 treaty called the Montreal Protocol to cut back on chemicals known as CFCs used in air conditioning, aerosol sprays, foam packaging and other products.
But CFCs have long atmospheric lifetimes, so it will take decades for them to disappear. The ozone layer isn't expected to recover to pre-1980 levels until sometime between 2030 and 2040.
However, some scientists say if the treaty hadn't been adopted, two-thirds of the world's ozone layer would be gone about a half-century from now, and our climate would already be several degrees warmer.
Depleted parts of the Ozone Layer can be repaired artificially by injecting oxygen gas through aircraft to the ozone layer to join in combination and dissociation reactions in the stratosphere. A detailed report of this is available at:
http://stephaz.webs.com/ozoneholerecovery.htm
This research is extremely important for man and the environment since in-50 years natural repair may not do for today combinational effects of ozone depletion and climate change.
All these propellant CFC chemicals were banned because the patents expired. For years we used inert gas called Freon as a propellant in aerosol cans, it was safe, and it worked because it didn't react with anything. But suddenly after the patents ran out on Freon-12, Freon-11 and CFC 113 all made by Dupont, it was discovered they reacted with sunlight and became rogue CFC chemicals eating all the free oxygen in the stratosphere and it was destroying the Ozone layer!
Really it's far more likely that suddenly these chemicals were being produced very cheaply overseas, and profits were falling. What's a big powerful company like Dupont to do when this happens? maybe leak that they are dangerous to Greenpeace and the enviro-terrorists and suggest that these are now a harmful chemical.
A little pushing and greasing of some wheels I'm sure and they were banned as part of the Montreal Accord, but too bad for the public that it really had nothing to do with the ozone hole or saving the environment , just corporate profits
The idiocy of the argument that a loan carbon atom in the stratosphere could block the production of Ozone, or even destroy ozone. Because Ozone is created by a reaction of sunlight and Oxygen there is nothing that will ever be able to stop it's creation, the odds are just too great that sunlight will find and bond oxygen to O3, and the number of rogue CFCs so infinitesimally small to try and block that process.
For those asking why is this hole forming? What makes this year different?
or why do they keep mentioning the cold air, and what does it have to do with the ozone?
The hole exists, because the ozone is being forced out of the area by the cold air.
Ozone O3 is a 3 piece oxygen molecule created by a reaction of sunlight and oxygen in the atmosphere. It is always being created anywhere the sun hits the air, and destroyed by the UV light.
In the antarctic the ice is so thick that a polar vortex always forms during their long night of winter ( a month or so with no sunlight at all.) during that time the cold air pushes all the warm air out and forms almost a wall of cold.
Because the Ozone is formed by sunlight it is warm when created, so is also pushed out. It's dark during the arctic winter so no Ozone is created there during that time so a hole forms.
Now normally because there is no land mass at the North pole, and very little inside the arctic circle, there is not normally enough ice mass to set up a polar vortex there, but this year it was unusually cold. A vortex formed and then so did an Ozone hole.
In both the arctic and the antarctic the ozone hole collapses once the sun rises again and heats the air enough to break the vortex.
There is a risk though for maybe a few weeks that this cold air mass before it breaks up does not have the ozone levels in it to guard against UV radiation in these very northern cities and towns and they could be at risk to skin cancer from the elevated UV. Not too likely that they will be out in shorts and a t-shirt anyway.
Currently, the Earth has almost the minimum solar intensity and the level of CFCs has dropped since around one decade ago. The apperance of an "unprecedent" polar ozone hole is certainly unexpected from the photochemical theory of ozone hole. However, the existing cosmic-ray related theory of the ozone hole, proposed by Dr. Q.-B. Lu in the University of Waterloo, Canada, did predict a deepest ozone hole in the polar region at the maximum cosmic ray radiation around 2010 [Q.-B. Lu, Physics Reports 487, 141-167(2010); Physical Review Letters 102, 118501(2009)]. Dr. Lu also discovered the correlation between global warming and CFCs [Journal of Cosmology 8, 1846-1862(2010)]. The truth is being revealed. Isn't It?
Let's not forget that this years Arctic sea ice coverage is the lowest it has been in recorded history.. part OD the downward trend that has been observed.