Columbia engineering study links ozone hole to climate change all the way to the equator
First time that ozone depletion is shown to impact the entire circulation of the southern hemisphere
In a study to be published in the April 21st issue of Science magazine, researchers at Columbia University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science report their findings that the ozone hole, which is located over the South Pole, has affected the entire circulation of the Southern Hemisphere all the way to the equator. While previous work has shown that the ozone hole is changing the atmospheric flow in the high latitudes, the Columbia Engineering paper, “Impact of Polar Ozone Depletion on Subtropical Precipitation,” demonstrates that the ozone hole is able to influence the tropical circulation and increase rainfall at low latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere. This is the first time that ozone depletion, an upper atmospheric phenomenon confined to the polar regions, has been linked to climate change from the Pole to the equator.
“The ozone hole is not even mentioned in the summary for policymakers issued with the last IPCC report,” noted Lorenzo M. Polvani, Professor of Applied Mathematics and of Earth & Environmental Sciences, Senior Research Scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and co-author of the paper. “We show in this study that it has large and far-reaching impacts. The ozone hole is a big player in the climate system!”
“It’s really amazing that the ozone hole, located so high up in the atmosphere over Antarctica, can have an impact all the way to the tropics and affect rainfall there — it’s just like a domino effect,” said Sarah Kang, Postdoctoral Research Scientist in Columbia Engineering’s Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics and lead author of the paper.
The ozone hole is now widely believed to have been the dominant agent of atmospheric circulation changes in the Southern Hemisphere in the last half century. This means, according to Polvani and Kang, that international agreements about mitigating climate change cannot be confined to dealing with carbon alone— ozone needs to be considered, too. “This could be a real game-changer,” Polvani added.
Located in the Earth’s stratosphere, just above the troposphere (which begins on Earth’s surface), the ozone layer absorbs most of the Sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays. Over the last half-century, widespread use of manmade compounds, especially household and commercial aerosols containing chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), has significantly and rapidly broken down the ozone layer, to a point where a hole in the Antarctic ozone layer was discovered in the mid 1980s. Thanks to the 1989 Montreal Protocol, now signed by 196 countries, global CFC production has been phased out. As a result, scientists have observed over the past decade that ozone depletion has largely halted and they now expect it to fully reverse, and the ozone hole to close by midcentury.
But, as Polvani has said, “While the ozone hole has been considered as a solved problem, we’re now finding it has caused a great deal of the climate change that’s been observed.” So, even though CFCs are no longer being added to the atmosphere, and the ozone layer will recover in the coming decades, the closing of the ozone hole will have a considerable impact on climate. This shows that through international treaties such as the Montreal Protocol, which has been called the single most successful international agreement to date, human beings are able to make changes to the climate system.
Together with colleagues at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis in Victoria, BC, Kang and Polvani used two different state-of-the-art climate models to show the ozone hole effect. They first calculated the atmospheric changes in the models produced by creating an ozone hole. They then compared these changes with the ones that have been observed in the last few decades: the close agreement between the models and the observations shows that ozone has likely been responsible for the observed changes in Southern Hemisphere.
This important new finding was made possible by the international collaboration of the Columbia University scientists with Canadian colleagues. Model results pertaining to rainfall are notoriously difficult to calculate with climate models, and a single model is usually not sufficient to establish credible results. By joining hands and comparing results from two independent models, the scientists obtained solid results.
Kang and Polvani plan next to study extreme precipitation events, which are associated with major floods, mudslides, etc. “We really want to know,” said Kang, “if and how the closing of the ozone hole will affect these.”
This study was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation to Columbia University.
Columbia Engineering
Columbia University’s Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, founded in 1864, offers programs in nine departments to both undergraduate and graduate students. With facilities specifically designed and equipped to meet the laboratory and research needs of faculty and students, Columbia Engineering is home to NSF-NIH funded centers in genomic science, molecular nanostructures, materials science, and energy, as well as one of the world’s leading programs in financial engineering. These interdisciplinary centers are leading the way in their respective fields while individual groups of engineers and scientists collaborate to solve some of society’s more vexing challenges. http://www.engineering.columbia.edu/
===============================================================
Impact of Polar Ozone Depletion on Subtropical Precipitation
Kang et al 2011, Science Express
Abstract:
Over the past half-century, the ozone hole has caused a
poleward shift of the extratropical westerly jet in the
Southern Hemisphere. Here, we argue that these
extratropical circulation changes, resulting from ozone
depletion, have substantially contributed to subtropical
precipitation changes. Specifically, we show that
precipitation in the Southern subtropics in austral
summer increases significantly when climate models are
integrated with reduced polar ozone concentrations.
Furthermore, the observed patterns of subtropical
precipitation change, from 1979 to 2000, are very similar
to those in our model integrations, where ozone depletion
alone is prescribed. In both climate models and
observations, the subtropical moistening is linked to a
poleward shift of the extratropical westerly jet. Our
results highlight the importance of polar regions on the
subtropical hydrological cycle.
Fig. 4. Mechanism linking the ozone hole to subtropical
precipitation change. Shading is the zonal-mean response in
austral summer of (A and D), temperature (in K), (B and E),
zonal wind (in m s–1), and (C and F), mean meridional mass
streamfunction (in 109 kg s–1). Black solid contours in (A) and
(D) are the mean temperatures, and red dashed lines indicate
the tropopause height in the reference integrations; the arrows
illustrate the lifting of tropopause in response to ozone
depletion. Black solid (dashed) contours in (B) and (E) are
the mean westerlies (easterlies) in the reference integrations,
and the arrows illustrate the direction of extratropical
westerly jet shift. Black solid (dashed) contours in (C) and (F)
are the clockwise (counter-clockwise) mean meridional
circulation in the reference integrations, and the arrows
illustrate the direction of anomalous vertical motion induced
by ozone depletion. Top row: the coupled CMAM
integrations [experiment (i)]. Bottom row: the uncoupled
CAM3 integrations with ozone depletion confined to 40-90°S
[experiment (iv)].
Full paper here: Kang-04-22-11 (PDF)
Supplemental material: kangSOM110422 (PDF)
=========================================================
UPDATE: BTW, in case anybody cares, this post went up 30 minutes AFTER the media embargo was lifted at 14:00 EST April 21. Compare that to the big argument going on over the Nisbet report. I have to agree with Keith Kloor on this one. Breaking embargoes is not only unprofessional, it is a fast track to excluding oneself from receiving any further media pre-releases. – Anthony
Wow, it’s a wonder we’ve survived on this fragile planet this long.
[/sarc]
So it’s not CO2? Who knew.
Clearly what is needed now is a study showing that a higher atmospheric concentration of CO2 is essential to further repair of the ozone hole.
Gillett (Nathan) the best a Man can Get? hum hum…
Another sucked out of a finger stuff.
Lu 2009 in Physical Review Letters is much more convincing and not a hot bed of warmistas from BC…
That outta put a spanner in the works!
Is there another cause and effect problem? Could the observed circulation patterns lead to higher or lower ozone levels each spring rather than the other way around?
I was interested to see what data they had used to come to this conclusions, then I saw that it was based on tow new climate models and I am afraid I stopped reading…….
“to a point where a hole in the Antarctic ozone layer was discovered in the mid 1980s.” Horse hockey. Dobson found hole in 1956 I think.
“A dobson unit is the most basic measure used in ozone research. The unit is named after G.M.B. Dobson, one of the first scientists to investigate atmospheric ozone (~1920 – 1960). He designed the ‘Dobson Spectrometer’ – the standard instrument used to measure ozone from the ground. The Dobson spectrometer measures the intensity of solar UV radiation at four wavelengths, two of which are absorbed by ozone and two of which are not.”
http://toms.gsfc.nasa.gov/dobson.html
Over the past half-century, the ozone hole has caused a poleward shift of the extratropical westerly jet in the Southern Hemisphere.
I challenge this assumption.
According to this paper on the “Final Warming Date of the Antarctic Polar Vortex and Influences on its Interannual Variability”;
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_7598/is_20091115/ai_n42654411/
“several studies (including Waugh and Randel 1999; Waugh et al. 1999; Karpetchko et al. 2005; Black and McDaniel 2007) have indicated a trend over the 1980s and 1990s toward a later vortex breakdown.”
This is a good paper exploring the Polar Vortices;
http://www.columbia.edu/~lmp/paps/waugh+polvani-PlumbFestVolume-2010.pdf
and the chart on page 10 shows the vortex break-up dates for the Northern Hemisphere since 1960 and Southern Hemisphere since 1979.
I think it is more likely that the Antarctic Polar Vortex, particularly when it coalesces into a single funnel during the Polar Winter and when it breaks down in the Spring, is the cause, the ozone hole and jet shifts are probably just effects…
I have several comments:
1. The ozone hole was seen first when they developed instrumentation capable of seeing it. They have no idea if the ozone hole predates the instrumentality.
2. Chloride ions seem to be the biggest offenders. On a planet with seas full of chloride ions, I find it amazing that they are so sure that no mechanism exists to get a very tiny amount of ocean chlorides to the stratosphere.
3. Formic acid is also suppose to cause ozone depletion, but that would shift the blame from humans to insects.
4. Once the ozone hole supposedly fills in and subtropical precipitation decreases, can we blame them for the droughts it will cause?
Jim
Sorry, I cannot get excited about this. The results are based on the output of models. Even though they get “the right answer”, I dont believe the output of non-validated models. Then, from what I can gather, it is unlikely that the ozone hole was caused by pollution. When the hole was first discovered, no-one bothered to ask how long it had been there; it was simply assumed to be man made. Despite the cessation of the use of CFCs etc. the ozone hole has not changed much. It is more likely to be caused by the southern polar vortex.
Correlation isn’t good enough. What does “likely” mean?
Last I heard, there was a paper claiming that the original research blaming CFCs for the ‘Ozone hole’ had major errors in it, and it was unlikely that Man had anything to do with the hole at all……
Just curious here but hasn’t most of the CFCs been produced in the northern hemisphere and used there? If so wouldn’t the larger hole in the Ozone layer be in the Northern polar regions. I must be missing something due to not understanding how the currents are in the atmosphere. I truly wonder CFCs mostly produced and used in the northern hemisphere would produce the problems in the southern hemisphere.
Bill Derryberry
PS I am not being sark I just really don’t know or understand.
B
As a skeptic of AGW, THIS IS one thing that is plausible
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5irCU6puHjAtpqk0CNX9pKUxhc2kg?docId=958930e05e064d95a2625d41fd4e45f6
“It’s really amazing that the ozone hole, located so high up in the atmosphere over Antarctica, can have an impact all the way to the tropics and affect rainfall there…”
Unbelievable, in fact.
“Model results pertaining to rainfall are notoriously difficult to calculate with climate models, and a single model is usually not sufficient to establish credible results. By joining hands and comparing results from two independent models, the scientists obtained solid results….”
Model results are difficult to calculate with models. Who knew? But two models! Now you’re cookin’! Now we’ve got solid results! Not as good as robust, you understand, but still very, very good. And two independent models joining hands? Whoa-ho! They’re going to sing kumbaya, folks.
This is a total disaster – what about Al Gore’s green money he needs to keep his waterfront mansions fashionable? What about the poor third world dictators needing money for mansions in France? Money for their AK-47s? Money for their new limousines? Now how’s a poor third world dictator to make a living?
And what about all those poor AGW government funded “scientists” needing government funded programs to make ends meet in difficult financial times? All those government funded universities with their free government AGW handouts? Now what’s Obama supposed to do with all his green programs?
This is terrible news. Hey, we got windmills in construction all over North America. No, no, no – this report MUST be condemned as religious heresy at all cost. Too much money at stake to accept this – has the AGW community threatened beheading yet?
“This study was funded by a grant from blah blah blah”
Just so long as someone keeps on throwing money at ’em, they’ll ‘prove’ the ozone hole / CO2 / whatever-is-in-fashion was ‘likely’ the cause of whatever ‘might be’ worse than you thunk.
They have their computer models well trained.
Tap in “hemorrhoids” and “Dodo” and it automatically produces a paper showing that, contrary to what was previously thought, it was actually hemorrhoids that caused the tragic demise of the Dodo.
For an extra bag of money, they’ll do more ‘research’ to prove that hemorrhoids also caused the heatwave in Russia in 2010.
It’s tough being a “Scientist”. But someone has to do it!
\sarc.
Dodgy Geezer says:
April 21, 2011 at 12:17 pm
“Last I heard, there was a paper claiming that the original research blaming CFCs for the ‘Ozone hole’ had major errors in it, and it was unlikely that Man had anything to do with the hole at all……”
I’m old enough to recall back in the 70’s all the hoo-ha about my Right Guard deoderant causing the hole in the ozone and freon being deadly for the ozone layer, yata, yata, yata. So, now that we don’t use that stuff, how come we still have a hole in the ozone? I suspect all of this CO2 clap-trap will go in the same direction in a few years. Science is absolutely dead as far as I am concerned. Where are all those idiots now that were pissin and moanin about the ozone back then? I suppose that any of them still around are on this new Climate Disruption band-wagon.
This is what we let them get away with before…
• “…civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind,” biologist George Wald, Harvard University, April 19, 1970.
• By 1995, “…somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.” Sen. Gaylord Nelson, quoting Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, Look magazine, April 1970.
• Because of increased dust, cloud cover and water vapor “…the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born,” Newsweek magazine, January 26, 1970.
• The world will be “…eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age,” Kenneth Watt, speaking at Swarthmore University, April 19, 1970.
• “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” biologist Barry Commoner, University of Washington, writing in the journal Environment, April 1970.
• “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from the intolerable deteriorations and possible extinction,” The New York Times editorial, April 20, 1970.
• “By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half…” Life magazine, January 1970.
• “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich, interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April 1970.
• “…air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone,” Paul Ehrlich, interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April 1970.
• Ehrlich also predicted that in 1973, 200,000 Americans would die from air pollution, and that by 1980 the life expectancy of Americans would be 42 years.
• “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” Earth Day organizer Denis Hayes, The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970.
• “By the year 2000…the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America and Australia, will be in famine,” Peter Gunter, North Texas State University, The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970.
Oh dear!
Does this mean the science isn’t settled after all?
That’s going to upset quite a few people, after what they have previously stated in public ad nauseum.
Another climate model which allegedly correctly fits with what has already happened to the climate. What we need is a climate model which correctly forecasts what happens next. That is the test. It is the failure of the gloom and doom forecasts over the past decade that has done most to discredit the whole AGW bandwagon. Reports like this, to have any scientific validity should include clear predictions which can be tested over the next few years and decades.
What strikes me as off already is the mismatch between Ozone Hole not now getting any bigger (or so far any smaller?) but the alleged reversal of the effects of the Ozone hole over the past decade. How does that work?
demonstrates that the ozone hole is able to influence the tropical circulation and increase rainfall at low latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere
====================================================
First they need to rectify the contradictions from this past year:
A lot of studies said the Amazon is in drought….
….actual measurements say it’s flooding
They always seem to pick places where they can’t be checked out.
• “…civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind,” biologist George Wald, Harvard University, April 19, 1970.
• By 1995, “…somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.” Sen. Gaylord Nelson, quoting Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, Look magazine, April 1970.
• Because of increased dust, cloud cover and water vapor “…the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born,” Newsweek magazine, January 26, 1970.
• The world will be “…eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age,” Kenneth Watt, speaking at Swarthmore University, April 19, 1970.
• “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” biologist Barry Commoner, University of Washington, writing in the journal Environment, April 1970.
• “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from the intolerable deteriorations and possible extinction,” The New York Times editorial, April 20, 1970.
• “By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half…” Life magazine, January 1970.
• “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich, interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April 1970.
• “…air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone,” Paul Ehrlich, interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April 1970.
• Ehrlich also predicted that in 1973, 200,000 Americans would die from air pollution, and that by 1980 the life expectancy of Americans would be 42 years.
• “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” Earth Day organizer Denis Hayes, The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970.
• “By the year 2000…the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America and Australia, will be in famine,” Peter Gunter, North Texas State University, The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970.
My computer model says bad computer models generate CO2 and destroy the ozone.
Can anyone put a link to Lu 2009 paper? thanks
Not knowing if the thinning (hole) predated its discovery, on what scientific basis did they proceed to blame man? Just when did CFCS come into use? How many decades does it take a chloride ion from Kansas to get to the ozone layer in the Antarctic?There seems to be obvious reasons for the thinning in those particular months from natural sources such as sunshine or lack thereof.
Bill in Vigo April 21, 2011 at 12:18 pm
Good question Bill. I second that.
Also doesn’t the ozone hole enlarge and reduce with the solar cycle?
“They first calculated the atmospheric changes in the models produced by creating an ozone hole. They then compared these changes with the ones that have been observed in the last few decades: the close agreement between the models and the observations shows that ozone has likely been responsible for the observed changes in Southern Hemisphere.”
Now, if only we could demonstrate a correlation between observed changes in the climate system and something quantifiable that existed in reality (HINT: it’s big and bright and very hot)…
mikemUK says: “Does this mean the science isn’t settled after all?”
Yes, but when it is settled, it’ll be “worse than we thought.” Trust me on this.
Bill in Vigo says:
April 21, 2011 at 12:18 pm
“Just curious here but hasn’t most of the CFCs been produced in the northern hemisphere and used there? If so wouldn’t the larger hole in the Ozone layer be in the Northern polar regions.”
This remains one of the great mysteries of climate science. CFCs, produced and used almost entirely in the northern hemisphere, produce a hole over the southern pole. Manmade CO2, produced almost entirely in the United States, Europe, and the Shanghai region of China is measured by a station in Hawaii and declared to be evenly distributed throughout the atmosphere. Don’t dare ask them how CFCs or CO2 gets from point A to point B. Not one of them has a clue.
So, they assert;
“Model results pertaining to rainfall are notoriously difficult to calculate with climate models, and a single model is usually not sufficient to establish credible results. By joining hands and comparing results from two independent models, the scientists obtained solid results.”
Sorry, that is false.
If the error in either model were known then it would be corrected and the other would be discarded. Hence, all that can be said is that both models are erroneous for unknown reason(s). Therefore,
One model provides a wrong result
and
the other model provides a wrong result.
so
both models provide a doubly wrong result
because
average wrong is wrong.
Richard
Models, models. Love them or hate them. I love runway models but hate models from the AGW crowd.
Not convinced !
WHEN (not if) the current Carbon-is-killing-us Meme dies the death it so richly deserves, THEN the current tax-subsidised chicken littles can go back to their old meme of Ozone-hole-is-made-by-man-and-it’s-a-disaster…
Plus, not only is it killing us, but the ozone hole disaster is WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT. Plus it’s accelerating! LOL!!
Oh my God, these shrill alarmists have been with us since the beginning of time – I would bet they have cockroach DNA in their bloodstream, they are so un-killable…
Wil says:
April 21, 2011 at 12:42 pm
“This is a total disaster – what about Al Gore’s green money he needs to keep his waterfront mansions fashionable?”
You live by trashy science, you die by trashy science. Could not happen to a more deserving Nobel Laureate. I just can’t wait to read the dueling trashy science websites at Columbia University and NASA.
How many unverified assumptions can you count in this paragraph? I get at least eight.
“…Over the last half-century, widespread use of manmade compounds, especially household and commercial aerosols containing chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), has significantly and rapidly broken down the ozone layer, to a point where a hole in the Antarctic ozone layer was discovered in the mid 1980s. Thanks to the 1989 Montreal Protocol, now signed by 196 countries, global CFC production has been phased out. As a result, scientists have observed over the past decade that ozone depletion has largely halted and they now expect it to fully reverse, and the ozone hole to close by midcentury.”
Funny how outputs from 1980’s vintage computer modeling of ozone depletion becomes the input for “two different state-of-the-art climate models” !
I’d say, garbage in garbage out.
Amazing what trace gases can do.
They say the so called hole over the South Pole increases the UV there.
Does any one have these readings so we can see them.
I bet there are no readings to prove that UV is much higher when there is a thining of the ozone.
So, to summarize, the ozone hole is due mainly to CFC’s which are no longer made, has only existed since the late 70’s or early 80’s when we first had a way to measure it, has not changed much since we first measured it, and is amplified by extreme cold over Antarctica which is colder now due to global warming but no one knows why, and we know all this because the computers tell us so.
Theories based on conjecture.
Sorry, not convinced yet. Keep working.
As a kind of preview of things to come, the claim was made that CFC’s became the source of highly reactive Cl- radicals, and that one Cl- radical could take out thousands/millions of O3 molecules before being transported out of the ozone layer and thus had an effective lifetime of decades or centuries. Sound like a familiar claim? So a thousand years from now, our 50x great-grandchildren will finally be able to log in to WUWT and crow about how wrong these clowns were about CFC’s and CO2 :-).
“…two different state-of-the-art climate models…” Yeah, we’re familiar with the current state of climate science models!
O2BNAZ says:
April 21, 2011 at 12:55 pm
Thanks for the memories! Same notes, different song. When you want to control the world, you just keep trying to find the right words.
It’s so sad to see really intelligent young people so brainwashed that they have forgotten how to make informed decisions. I’m guessing that a requirement for course and field work in geology would sober up a bunch of them. It’s hard to claim “unprecedented” when your nose has been rubbing in the rebuttal, despite the sloth-dungers claims to the contrary.
Ummm when did these scientists forget correlation IS NOT causation? By their reasoning we all know ice cream causes shark attacks.
Models: Balsam wood, glue & rice paper.
Hey, didn’t we ban all the Freon stuff just to close the hole?
It was an expensive ban. Scientist said, and we paid the price.
Darn Ozone hole is stubborn as a mule.
Maybe it just plain has a mind of its own, and doesn’t care what we puny humans do.
There’s a lesson here.
Anthony reported on a paper 2 yrs ago that claimed to demonstrate that the Ozone hole was caused by cosmic rays (hence modulated by solar activity), with CFC’s being at best a minor player.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/26/galactic-cosmic-rays-may-be-responsible-for-the-antarctic-ozone-hole/
Thus if the current paper is correct about the ozone hole causing “climate change,” the result is much the same as with the current debate about late 20th century warming. What caused the warming/the-ozone-hole? Was it human effects on the atmosphere, or was it the sun? In both cases, the alarmists are improperly dismissing the natural explanation, since Kang et al. seem to assume that the ozone hole is caused by CFC’s (with their bold claims about Montreal being a model Agreement).
Its truly amazing to me that concepts such as ‘Correlation vs. Causation’ and ‘Cause and Effect’ are used to filter stuff like this out. AMAZingly bad science….
What would Mann and the Team for proxies to measure historic ozone levels over the South Pole?
I don’t know the answer to that, other than the raw data, as per usual, will need strangling to support any of their theories.
Isn’t a hole in the ozone layer a good thing? This let’s the excess heat and other greenhouse pollutants (from global warming) escape into outerspace. Otherwise we would be burning up faster than we already are.
I rather doubt one simple cause; and the “Ozone hole” has been around for as long as we’ve known about it. But, it does suggest that reactions in the upper atmosphere can affect the lower atmosphere – and then there is the UV changes that impact ozone formation
rbateman says:
April 21, 2011 at 2:00 pm
Hey, didn’t we ban all the Freon stuff just to close the hole?
Will we get a rebate from the government? How about all those private contractors who were put out of work when Freon was priced off the market and its replacement was extremely expensive to manage, at least given the new paperwork?
So the leak in my air conditioner caused all the warming… ?
I think the “problem hole” in this theory is in somebody’s head.
“Higher Education” is now more like “Liar Education”.
Who paid for this one?
This sounds like hogwash, models and wild speculation. I’m in agreement with those on this thread who pointed out we didn’t know the ozone hole existed until we had the technology to detect it, and truth to tell, we have no idea if it was around at the time of the Battle of Hastings or when Julius Caesar got stabbed by craven miscreants or even when mastodons (however briefly) ruled the earth. Did you run this story for irony? I can’t believe, Anthony, you take this seriously.
REPLY: I posted it for discussion, without commentary. That doesn’t mean I agree with it all. – Anthony
It sad that these guys have pulled this STUNT for so long without someone calling them on it.
OZONE does NOT “protect us” from UV radiation. OZONE (O3) is FORMED by high end UV radiation hitting the atmosphere.
This is yet another FICTION. It really DRIVES ME NUTS.
How about taking the time to read, “Dissociation of Oxygen and It’s Consequences”, 4.18, page 165, from Fleagle and Businger, “An Introduction to Atmospheric Physics”. 1965. When UV hits the upper atm. it MAKES O3.
Now where would UV be less, Equator or Poles? Where would ONE EXPECT THE O3 to be less?
I think this is the KING’S NEW CLOTHES!
Max
Just to clarify. Assuming this is correct or close – and it certainly does make general sense to me – doesn’t this change things rather significantly.
In other words, was this factor even considered in any of their super-duper crystal ball models?
If not they’re going to need to become ozone hole deniers, or something like that.
How does this fit in with ‘noctilucent, or “night shining,” clouds’?
“AIM researchers also believe there is a connection between seemingly disparate atmospheric patterns in the north and south. The upwelling of polar air each summer that contributes to noctilucent cloud formation is part of a larger circulation loop that travels between the two poles. So wind activity some 13,000 miles (20,920 km) away in the northern hemisphere appears to be influencing the southern circulation.”
Maybe the Ozone hole is supposed to be there, I don’t know.
sarc on:
My gut feeling about this theory tells me it also involves the other “Big Hole at the Pole” (and all the UFO’s too…)
http://www.granddistraction.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/hollow11.jpg
It’s a hole lot worse than we thought. sarc off.
Astrophysicist Dr. Willie Soon (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)
“If we take away all the ozone out of the atmosphere , how long would it take to come back? ”
answere
“150 days”
http://itsrainmakingtime.com/2009/climate-part2/
A True Inquiry Into Climate & Weather (2/2): The Plot Thickens
interview with Astrophysicist Dr. Willie Soon (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and climatologist Dr. David Legates (University of Delaware)
min 41.00 – 48.00
To sum this up….
We really need the ozone hole to be the CAUSE of cooling in Antarctica and so we noticed that there was some variation in some climate behavior that we want the ozone hole to have caused so we can blame mankind on even more of the problems that we want mankind to have caused.
This isn’t as bad as the papers saying that CO2 caused Antarctica to freeze 34 million years ago, but it is certainly a piece of the puzzle they are putting together to make every aspect of the modern climate to be impacted by some emission.
http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/2011/04/the-failure-of-gcms-in-the-evolution-of-antarctica/
“It’s really amazing that the ozone hole, located so high up in the atmosphere over Antarctica, can have an impact all the way to the tropics and affect rainfall there…”
Either that, or a butterfly at the south pole has been flapping its wings again.
so it was only discovered 25 years ago….
…and has not changed
and no one in this world has a base line of what it should be
No one knows if it was always there, or not….
…perfectly normal or not
Everything man does causes climate change.
The 3 kingdoms of Egypt all fell due to climate change.
So did the Roman Empire, the Persians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Greeks, etc.
They all undid themselves by causing climate change.
Even the Great Depression caused the Dust Bowl.
And yet, after all that, the Earth seems to go right on about its climactic business, gobbling up one civilization after another.
The Earth is very hungry, having eaten the dinosaurs too.
Burp.
If the ozone hole is related to the current climate change, then why has the southern hemisphere warmed less than the northern hemisphere.
The WMO expert assesment 2010 found the following
Observations and model simulations show that the Antarctic ozone hole caused much of the observed southward shift of the Southern Hemisphere middle latitude jet in the troposphere during summer since 1980. The horizontal structure, seasonality, and amplitude of the observed trends in the Southern Hemisphere tropospheric jet are only reproducible in climate models forced with Antarctic ozone depletion. The southward shift in the tropospheric jet extends to the surface of the Earth and is linked dynamically to the ozone hole induced strengthening of the Southern Hemisphere stratospheric polar vortex.
The southward shift of the Southern Hemisphere tropospheric jet due to the ozone hole has been linked to a range of observed climate trends over Southern Hemisphere mid and high latitudes during summer.
Because of this shift, the ozone hole has contributed to robust summertime trends in surface winds, warming over the Antarctic Peninsula, and cooling over the high plateau. Other impacts of the ozone hole on surface climate have been investigated but have yet to be fully quantified. These include observed increases in sea ice area averaged around Antarctica; a southward shift of the Southern Hemisphere storm track and associated precipitation; warming of the subsurface Southern Ocean at depths up to several hundred meters; and decreases of carbon uptake over the Southern Ocean.
Polvani et al 2011 in another paper that O3 recovery may cancel the SH circulation changes.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011GL046712.shtml
This is an interesting constraint on the efficacy argument of Hanson who uses Meehls 2004 additivity argument as well as Shindell and Schmidt 2004 eg.Polvani 2011
It is now widely documented that stratospheric ozone depletion has played a major role in causing the atmospheric circulation changes that have been observed in the Southern Hemisphere (SH) during the second half of the 20th century [see e.g., Polvani et al., 2011, and references therein]. It is thus likely that the projected ozone recovery will have a considerable impact in the coming decades: understanding that impact is the goal of this paper. It may be worth recalling, as originally pointed out by Shindell and Schmidt [2004], that in the late 20th century the depletion of stratospheric ozone has added to the circulation changes associated with increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs), whereas in the 21st century ozone recovery will subtract from them.
For Tom Rude. The Lu PhysRev Letters paper is behind a paywall at
prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v102/i11/e118501
What creates ozone in the upper atmosphere? I understand it to be the action of the wavelength of UVB in sunlight breaking apart molecules of O2, which then reform, in a continuous process, sometimes as O3 and also O2.
What do the antarctic and arctic have something in common with each other, and nowhere else on the planet, besides a lot of ice? A 6 month day and a 6 month night.
If no O3 can be created without sunlight then an absence of ozone would be expected at the end of the antarctic winter in Sept/Oct. Which is exactly what is observed today and has probably been the case for millions of years despite regular eruptions of Mt Erebus heaving many tons of chlorine and other ozone destroying gases up to the ozone layer.
Just because we can suddenly identify this ozone hole is surely no reason to blame deodorants, hair spray or refrigeration gas. Unless there is another reason, such as the expiry of the commercial patent on the manufacture of CFCs (Freon) in 1993…
The ozone “hole” was not “discovered” in the 1980’s, 1970’s, 1960’s nor at any other time. Its existence was PREDICTED as a natural phenomenon by Professor Gordon Dobson and others in the early 1950’s.
Professor Dobson believed there were high level wind currents which had a significant effect on weather patterns. In order to prove his theory he needed to be able to somehow “tag” air and record its movement.
Since the bulk of atmospheric ozone is caused by incoming sunlight striking oxygen rising from the planet surface, Dobson and others correctly assumed that all other things being equal, there should be little or NO ozone over Antarctica at the end of the SH winter for the simple reason that there had been no sunlight there for several months.
Professor Dobson however, speculated that if there were air currents moving in the upper atmosphere they would bring in ozone from places where the sun had been shining. In other words, the presence of SOME ozone, as opposed to the natural consequence of NO ozone (due to the lack of sunlight), would “prove” his theory of high-level atmospheric air currents.
Professor Dobson subsequently invented the Dobson Spectrophotometer which measures atmospheric ozone concentrations in Dobson Units – which we still use today.
In 1957 (The International Geophysical Year) Professor Dobson used his instrument to record the EXISTENCE of ozone (albeit “depleted”) over Antarctica, thereby proving his theory of upper atmospheric air currents. Further, by establishing “patterns” in the rate of depletion (or, more correctly, “replenishment”), he was able to produce the first speculative maps of these currents.
For his work Professor Dobson was awarded the “International Geophysical Man of the Year” award. He went on to write a book about it, “Exploring the Atmosphere” which was one of my textbooks back at high school in the sixties.
All these idiots have done in this quoted study is reverse the cause and effect that Dobson established over half a century ago – and today we call this “science”.
Incidentally, there are no “holes” in the ozone layer for the very simple reason that there isn’t one – “layer” that is.
“This study was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation…”
I understand.
John Kehr says:
April 21, 2011 at 2:58 pm
You see clearly the method in their madness. It utilizes, implicitly, the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent. “When it rains, the ground gets wet; my yard is wet, ∴ it rained.” (or, maybe Hansen or someone p**sed in my yard today)
What they want the take home message to be:
1) The ozone hole was caused by man.
2) Ozone hole was fixed because of massive government intervention.
3) ∴ Massive government intervention can solve climate problems.
It also invokes two other logical fallacies (at least), the sweeping generalization (I fixed my car, ∴ I can fix all cars), and argumentum ad ignorantium (argument from ignorance—it has not been proven false, therefore my argument is true)
They seek to justify further grants and government interventions, with subsequent additional loss of freedom, for sketchy benefit.
[BTW, I have brought this up before: ozone is the only paramagnetic gas. It is influenced by the strength and position of magnetic fields. One can speculate what the ramifications of this are.]
I will strongly recommend to read the last article of Erl Happ at
http://climatechange1.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/the-common-sense-of-climate-change/
Excellent, and the first time I read wath drives ENSO … a must read ….
Essentially, only crazed climate communist hippies worry over a*hole that has been known to have been open for parts of one satellite age only. But I’m sure the doped up climate folks can model (CO2 inflate Barbara) a* useful hole before coming of the satellite age, just to try and try again to prove a squeaky clean point of anthropogenic catastrophic entry.
memory vault:
Nice synopsis. Thank you.
Eco-global cross-purposes, The Report Newsmagazine, 10-21-2002, Up Front, by Colby Cosh
http://classic-web.archive.org/web/20021205100856/http:/207.216.246.197/2002/021021/002.html
See the movie accessible at the NASA website via the following links. The shrinking of the “ozone hole” is truly astounding. What is even more amazing is a corresponding massive increase in atmospheric ozone right next to the vanishing “ozone hole”.
View an MPEG movie http://toms.gsfc.nasa.gov/news/oz_hole_01_02.mpg (2 Mbytes) or
a QuickTime movie http://toms.gsfc.nasa.gov/news/oz_hole_01_02.qt (10 Mbytes) of the 2001 and 2002 ozone holes side-by-side from September 22 through October 6 for each of the two years.
Isn’t it very odd that we saw nothing about that in the media? Does that mean that good news is not news worth reporting? Still, the “ozone hole” is not a hole. It is a reduction in the ozone in the atmosphere in the area over and surrounding the South Pole that reaches its peak in September and October. The ozone content of the atmosphere is by no means uniform over all areas of the globe and varies considerably with the seasons.
The news about the non-existent ozone hole is old news. It has been know since 1994 and before that the ozone-hole alarm was a mistake, perhaps even a hoax, based on false premises:
New Scientific Evidence Proves Ozone Depletion Theory False
New scientific evidence continues to demonstrate that the ozone depletion models -and the resulting ban on CFCs- are based on a Big Lie
By Rogelio Maduro
http://classic-web.archive.org/web/20030118222624/http:/mitosyfraudes.8k.com/INGLES/Crista.html
All I needed to read…
“Together with colleagues at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis in Victoria, BC, Kang and Polvani used two different state-of-the-art climate models to show the ozone hole effect.”
[yawwwwwwwwwwwwn….zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz]
I don’t know what happened, by my previous attempt to post this vanished. Here it is once more.
Eco-global cross-purposes, The Report Newsmagazine, 10-21-2002, Up Front, by Colby Cosh
http://classic-web.archive.org/web/20021205100856/http:/207.216.246.197/2002/021021/002.html
See the movie accessible at the NASA website via the following links. The shrinking of the “ozone hole” is truly astounding. What is even more amazing is a corresponding massive increase in atmospheric ozone right next to the vanishing “ozone hole”.
View an MPEG movie http://toms.gsfc.nasa.gov/news/oz_hole_01_02.mpg (2 Mbytes) or
a QuickTime movie http://toms.gsfc.nasa.gov/news/oz_hole_01_02.qt (10 Mbytes) of the 2001 and 2002 ozone holes side-by-side from September 22 through October 6 for each of the two years.
Isn’t it very odd that we saw nothing about that in the media? Does that mean that good news is not news worth reporting? Still, the “ozone hole” is not a hole. It is a reduction in the ozone in the atmosphere in the area over and surrounding the South Pole that reaches its peak in September and October. The ozone content of the atmosphere is by no means uniform over all areas of the globe and varies considerably with the seasons.
The news about the non-existent ozone hole is old news. It has been know since 1994 and before that the ozone-hole alarm was a mistake, perhaps even a hoax, based on false premises:
New Scientific Evidence Proves Ozone Depletion Theory False
New scientific evidence continues to demonstrate that the ozone depletion models -and the resulting ban on CFCs- are based on a Big Lie
By Rogelio Maduro
http://classic-web.archive.org/web/20030118222624/http:/mitosyfraudes.8k.com/INGLES/Crista.html
If cold is responsible for an Ozone hole in the Arctic, could it not be responsible (in part) for the Ozone hole at the southern pole?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/05/arctic-ozone-hole-in-march/
Jim Cripwell says:
April 21, 2011 at 12:06 pm
Sorry, I cannot get excited about this. The results are based on the output of models. Even though they get “the right answer”, I dont believe the output of non-validated models. Then, from what I can gather, it is unlikely that the ozone hole was caused by pollution. When the hole was first discovered, no-one bothered to ask how long it had been there; it was simply assumed to be man made. Despite the cessation of the use of CFCs etc. the ozone hole has not changed much. It is more likely to be caused by the southern polar vortex.
Jim, Jim – you have to realize that there was a halcyon period sometime in the 1700s when the Earth’s climate was unchanging ideal then Eve was tempted by the serpent… and industrialization started changing the climate that had NEVER changed before….. /sarc
As with the Bible story there is a requirement in the psyche of some people to have a person to blame for anything and before that person came along everything was fine. Hence we find an ozone hole – there MUST be some person (big oil? industry? Sinners!!?) who created it and it must be BAD. This appears to be a character trait in some people. Remember eclipses were a sign that the ‘gods’ were angry; Noah’s flood, Sodom and Gomorrah – all of these stories follow the same plot – bad people, nature upset, gods angry have to seek forgiveness (pay tithes to the greens).
Just because some people use their own computer models to show something does not appear to show an advance over the thought processes of a shaman inspecting the entrails of a dead sheep for a ‘robust result’ – and its your fault the gods are angry.
Tilo Reber says:
April 21, 2011 at 3:21 pm
They cannot make up thier minds whether the ozone hole causes global cooling or warming, because they don’t know how it works or where it fits in.
That is why the alarms keep shifting back & forth over muti-decadal timeframes.
They are lost.
This is my third attempt to post this. Every previous time it was rejected because my name and and e-mail address were ostensibly missing, even though every time they were shown.
I did use “block-quote”, “bold” and “italics” command, which I left off this time. Maybe that will do the trick.
“Eco-global cross-purposes,” The Report Newsmagazine, 10-21-2002, Up Front, by Colby Cosh
http://classic-web.archive.org/web/20021205100856/http:/207.216.246.197/2002/021021/002.html
“On September 17, an atmospheric scientist for the Australian government, Paul Fraser, declared that he expects the infamous “ozone hole” over the Antarctic to be closed by 2050 as humankind reduces its output of the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) which have been steadily replaced in refrigeration systems worldwide under the 1987 Montreal Protocol. But could it be happening sooner than expected? Thirteen days later, the U.S.’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that the “hole” (actually just a thinning of the ozone layer that protects life on earth from solar radiation) had shrunk dramatically and actually split into two smaller holes….”
__________________
See the movie accessible at the NASA website via the following links. The shrinking of the “ozone hole” is truly astounding. What is even more amazing is a corresponding massive increase in atmospheric ozone right next to the vanishing “ozone hole”.
View an MPEG movie http://toms.gsfc.nasa.gov/news/oz_hole_01_02.mpg (2 Mbytes) or
a QuickTime movie http://toms.gsfc.nasa.gov/news/oz_hole_01_02.qt (10 Mbytes) of the 2001 and 2002 ozone holes side-by-side from September 22 through October 6 for each of the two years.
Isn’t it very odd that we saw nothing about that in the media? Does that mean that good news is not news worth reporting? Still, the “ozone hole” is not a hole. It is a reduction in the ozone in the atmosphere in the area over and surrounding the South Pole that reaches its peak in September and October. The ozone content of the atmosphere is by no means uniform over all areas of the globe and varies considerably with the seasons.
The news about the non-existent ozone hole is old news. It has been know since 1994 and before that the ozone-hole alarm was a mistake, perhaps even a hoax, based on false premises:
“New Scientific Evidence Proves Ozone Depletion Theory False”
New scientific evidence continues to demonstrate that the ozone depletion models -and the resulting ban on CFCs- are based on a Big Lie
By Rogelio Maduro
http://classic-web.archive.org/web/20030118222624/http:/mitosyfraudes.8k.com/INGLES/Crista.html
This is my fourth attempt to post this. Every previous time the comment vanished.
I did use “block-quote”, “bold” and “italics” command, which I left off this time. Maybe that will do the trick. In addition, I split it into three parts, just in case I showed too many links.
“Eco-global cross-purposes,” The Report Newsmagazine, 10-21-2002, Up Front, by Colby Cosh
http://classic-web.archive.org/web/20021205100856/http:/207.216.246.197/2002/021021/002.html
“On September 17, an atmospheric scientist for the Australian government, Paul Fraser, declared that he expects the infamous “ozone hole” over the Antarctic to be closed by 2050 as humankind reduces its output of the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) which have been steadily replaced in refrigeration systems worldwide under the 1987 Montreal Protocol. But could it be happening sooner than expected? Thirteen days later, the U.S.’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that the “hole” (actually just a thinning of the ozone layer that protects life on earth from solar radiation) had shrunk dramatically and actually split into two smaller holes….”
looks like a lower ice Spring NH is related more with a a with high minimum (except 2007) in Sept etc..
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php lets see what happens this Sept. This is VIP territory for the team because a high ice this summer will probably nail it for the skeptics
See the movie accessible at the NASA website via the following links. The shrinking of the “ozone hole” is truly astounding. What is even more amazing is a corresponding massive increase in atmospheric ozone right next to the vanishing “ozone hole”.
View an MPEG movie http://toms.gsfc.nasa.gov/news/oz_hole_01_02.mpg (2 Mbytes) or
a QuickTime movie http://toms.gsfc.nasa.gov/news/oz_hole_01_02.qt (10 Mbytes) of the 2001 and 2002 ozone holes side-by-side from September 22 through October 6 for each of the two years.
Isn’t it very odd that we saw nothing about that in the media? Does that mean that good news is not news worth reporting? Still, the “ozone hole” is not a hole. It is a reduction in the ozone in the atmosphere in the area over and surrounding the South Pole that reaches its peak in September and October. The ozone content of the atmosphere is by no means uniform over all areas of the globe and varies considerably with the seasons.
The 2002 news about the non-existent ozone hole was old news. It had been know since 1994 and before that the ozone-hole alarm was a mistake, perhaps even a hoax, based on false premises:
“New Scientific Evidence Proves Ozone Depletion Theory False”
New scientific evidence continues to demonstrate that the ozone depletion models -and the resulting ban on CFCs- are based on a Big Lie
By Rogelio Maduro
http://classic-web.archive.org/web/20030118222624/http:/mitosyfraudes.8k.com/INGLES/Crista.html
The good news is that this nonsense was done at the Columbia University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science and appears not to be associated with the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Surely somewhere in the geological sciences common sense prevails.
The third part of the attempts to post my comment vanished, but WordPress now tells me that I already said what does not show up.
I will keep things short and just post the link to an article that, I am sure, will be of interest:
http://classic-web.archive.org/web/20030118222624/http:/mitosyfraudes.8k.com/INGLES/Crista.html
I am skeptical of the idea that we caused the ozone hole.
1. CFCs are heavier than the average atmospheric gas, so it tends to cling to the ground. It hardly seems likely that significant amounts would make it into the upper atmosphere.
2. Most of the CFCs were produced in the Northern Hemisphere while most of the Ozone depletion happened in the southern hemisphere. Migration of CFCs across all of the various circulation cells seems unlikely.
3. Most importantly: we don’t know if the ozone “hole” existed before it was “discovered” because we have no records from before that time. It may be a permanent fixture in the Earth’s atmosphere. That would mean that (as usual) because of a sham-science scare we have made refrigeration much more expensive, harming most the 3rd world, for little or no improvement in the environment.
Can’t fault the memoryvault on this, the article is interesting till it starts to rattle on about modelling – this and that, therefore it is all idle speculation.
If I were a cynic [and I am a realist] I’d say they’re [alarmists] having another go at changing the goalposts…… again.
Except we didn’t cause the ozone hole.
False assumptions, wrong conclusions.
I don’t know how this will change any speculation about ramifications, but ozone is diamagnetic. O2 is paramagnetic.
http://www.science.uwaterloo.ca/~qblu/Lu-2009PRL.pdf
If this is the paper you mean
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070926/full/449382a.html
You need to also cite this
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090507/full/news.2009.456.html
Is New Zealand good enough?
http://www2.nau.edu/~doetqp-p/courses/env440/env440_2/lectures/lec39/Fig-1.gif
And yes, I am a skeptic.
Direwolf (and others)
Dupont Chemicals held the patent on CFC’s which were about to expire.
Most of the “science” “proving” CFC’s were responsible for the naturally occurring “hole” in the ozone layer came from the labs at Dupont Chemicals, or from other labs where the “research” was financed by Dupont Chemicals.
CFC’s were subsequently banned under the Montreal Protocol.
Dupont Chemicals “just happened” to have available a new range of chemicals to replace CFC’s. In other words, just when the patent on one of Dupont Chemicals biggest earners was about to run out, the substance got banned, and Dupont Chemicals got handed a world-wide monopoly on refrigerant-type gases estimated to be worth around $16 billion a year at the time.
The major shareholder in Dupont Chemicals at the time was Edgar Bronfman Senior.
Edgar Bronfman Senior personally footed the bill for the shindig at Montreal which gave us the Montreal protocol. Apparently the entire “CFC’s are bad and must be banned” campaign cost him about $250 million.
Not a bad outlay for a $16 billion a year monopoly.
I hope this helps you understand the “science” of how man-made CFC’s, which are five times heavier than air, and originating mostly in the NH, can nonetheless migrate to the upper reaches of the atmosphere, and accumulate over the least-populated place on the face of the planet at the bottom of the SH, and only in September-October at the end of the SH winter when the sun has not been shining for six months.
Sorry about all of those comments, of which most are duplications. They got lost but then were found. Snip away, snip away…
Anyway, I find it is difficult to become exited about annually fluctuating ozone “holes” that are not holes and show up up only for a couple of weeks or so each year.
If anyone is truly worried about the lack of ozone in the stratosphere during those two weeks, then perhaps the best remedy is not to partake too much of the sun between Sept. 22 and Oct. 6 each year in the Antarctic, right?
Still, it seems to me that the ban on freon was a costly mistake if the ozone hole still happens to occur, now and then, even though the use of freon has been banned for so many years. For how long has the ozone “hole” been a feature of the antarctic atmosphere anyway? It was probably around for millions of years before anyone even thought of freon, let alone spell it and make it.
Ian W says:
April 21, 2011 at 4:40 pm
“As with the Bible story there is a requirement in the psyche of some people to have a person to blame for anything and before that person came along everything was fine.”
Ah, yes, that age old story. The last prophet, the one whose vision we labor under at this time, was Karl Marx. After he and some others dispensed with God, they promoted the union boss to the position. Unfortunately, being a mere mortal, the union boss was thwarted by another man, the capitalist. Only through the work of the communist party will the union overcome the capitalist and the golden age will be recaptured. (You would be shocked to know how many tenured professors spend their entire lives spinning this story endlessly. At least they have attained the golden age.)
It woz CFCs wot dun it – honest your honour! CO2… he’s innocent, he wasn’t even there, honest to goodness, it woz CFCs all the time.
@DireWolf says:
April 21, 2011 at 5:08 pm…
Strangely enough Dupont who owned the expiring patent on Freon was able to leverage the CFC scare to outlaw budding low cost competitors in Brazil who were setting up to manufacture Freon. Those investors lost all their money and the third world lost a development opportunity. Dupont had fresh patents on the replacements and locked in 30 years of solid $billions of profits.
Enviro-zealots 1, Crony Capitalists 1, everyone else -1.
REF: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/blackstock5.html
Regarding the Ozone hole
Dodgy science meets dodgy science and the result is just dodgy dodgy with no science.
Columbia’s engineering school should be ashamed.
They don’t even deserve the title of “Boffins”.
(just my attempt at limey levity, but what is an ol country boy to do.)
memoryvault says:
April 21, 2011 at 5:42 pm
Yeah – what he just said…
(Just read your post and you know more about this than I do – good work)
memoryvault says:
April 21, 2011 at 5:42 pm
=========
You nailed it.
It’s all about introducing new products.
With the “save the world” sales pitch.
I think the success of the venture is even starting to scare the cheerleaders.
Frank K. says:
April 21, 2011 at 4:34 pm
All I needed to read…
“Together with colleagues at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis in Victoria, BC…”
There. Even shorter now. Victoria = Weaver = IPCC Pinnochio = Junk Science.
I’m surprised that the Science would publish this because:
1. It says that changes in ozone have a large climate effect.
But, ozone is only important because it absorbs UV.
The UV output of the sun is highly variable over the solar cycle even if TSI is relatively constant.
Therefore, the solar cycle has a significant effect on climate variations and any climate models that do not account for this are hopelessly inadequate.
Conclusion: CO2 must have much less effect on climate changes!
Sooooooo…if they are postulating that closing the hole will have major climatic consequences we may not like, should we be tinkering at all with CO2????????
sarc/off
I can so imagine a cool new game called “Climopoly!”
Walter Schneider says: April 21, 2011 at 4:32 pm
See the movie accessible at the NASA website via the following links. The shrinking of the “ozone hole” is truly astounding. What is even more amazing is a corresponding massive increase in atmospheric ozone right next to the vanishing “ozone hole”.
View an MPEG movie http://toms.gsfc.nasa.gov/news/oz_hole_01_02.mpg (2 Mbytes) or
a QuickTime movie http://toms.gsfc.nasa.gov/news/oz_hole_01_02.qt (10 Mbytes)
NASA’s video of the “ozone hole” definitely appears to be a Polar Vortex;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_vortex
which “are caused when an area of low pressure sits at the rotation pole of a planet. This causes air to spiral down from higher in the atmosphere, like water going down a drain.”
http://www.universetoday.com/973/what-venus-and-saturn-have-in-common/
Here’s an animation of the Arctic Polar Vortex in Winter 2008 – 09:
Here’s animation of the Polar Vortices on Venus:
If there was ozone on Venus, wouldn’t one expect to see a pair of ozone holes?
BBC’s Richard Black now connects this to Australia’s drought.
I particularly noticed the disclaimer:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13161265
I weary of naked men, sitting around a fire, under a full moon, casting bones, muttering… booga booga. GK
The more I read, the dumber this gets…
BBC News, April 5th. 2011 care of Richard Black, “Arctic ozone levels in never-before-seen plunge”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12969167
Arctic ozone plot (KNMI/Nasa/FMI) Long a consideration in the Antarctic, ozone levels in the Arctic are now a cause for concern
The ozone layer has seen unprecedented damage in the Arctic this winter due to cold weather in the upper atmosphere.
By the end of March, 40% of the ozone in the stratosphere had been destroyed, against a previous record of 30%.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12969167
“A low-pressure ring of winds known as a vortex forms over the poles each winter, isolating air masses in these regions from mixing with mid-latitude air. The destruction of ozone, which occurs in these isolated air masses, can worsen until the vortex breaks up. ”
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/72206/title/Record_%E2%80%98Arctic%E2%80%99_ozone_minimum_expands_beyond_Arctic
“Been destroyed” and “The destruction of ozone” are ridiculous, the Arctic Polar Vortex displacing ozone and everything else in its path, does not mean that it’s destroying ozone.
There’s been a persistent Arctic Polar Vortex;
http://www2.nict.go.jp/y/y223/simulation/ion/images/t3.jpg
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/images/avn/250_wnd_anl.avn.anim.html
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/images/fnl/sfctmp_01.fnl.gif
but it’s about to breakdown and magically the “destroyed” ozone is about to reappear…
“A Lovely Swirl: Orbiter Spots a Shifting Vortex at Venus’s South Pole
Observations from the European Space Agency’s Venus Express orbiter add to the mystery of our cloud-veiled planetary neighbor
By John Matson | April 8, 2011”
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=venus-polar-vortex
That atmospheric swirling causes vortices at the poles with bright filaments that are visible to infrared eyes such as those of Venus Express’s Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer. An S-shaped northern polar vortex was discovered in the infrared by NASA’s Pioneer Venus spacecraft in the late 1970s, and Venus Express found a similar-looking feature at the south pole in 2006. But the story got more complex as Venus Express returned to the south polar region time and time again to find the southern vortex had moved or changed shape entirely.
“I think the most striking thing about it is it changes so much from day to day,” says lead study author David Luz, a planetary scientist at the University of Lisbon in Portugal. Venus Express is in a 24-hour polar orbit, so it can take a snapshot of the south pole relatively often but cannot watch gradual changes unfold over timescales of several hours. “When it comes back the next day the feature has changed,” Luz says.
The center of rotation of the vortex is offset from the planet’s south pole by about three degrees of latitude, but it migrates around the pole over the course of several days. “We still haven’t figured out what causes it to move around, but we suspect it is related to what is called the meridional circulation,” Luz says, referring to an atmospheric circulation pattern that moves air at high altitudes from the equator to the poles, where the air sinks for an equatorward return at lower altitudes. “We expect that over the poles it is down-welling like a drain,” Luz says. “If the center of rotation is drifting, then we think it probably means that the point of maximum down-welling is drifting.”
Figuring out why the vortex at the pole moves and changes so quickly might help planetary scientists develop a better understanding of Venus’s extreme atmospheric system. “We would like to know how the meridional circulation relates to the motion of the vortex, how the global circulation is feeding the vortex—that’s the missing link,” Luz says.”
Jim Masterson says:
April 21, 2011 at 12:05 pm
2. Chloride ions seem to be the biggest offenders. On a planet with seas full of chloride ions, I find it amazing that they are so sure that no mechanism exists to get a very tiny amount of ocean chlorides to the stratosphere.
Well, if the geoengineering druids get a say they’ll soon enough have a whole fleet of chimney-scows circling the UK doing just that!
There is a saying:
For somebody with a hammer , everything is a nail.
Else, “have model, will travel”.
They are trying hard to save the credibility of their models with some contact with the real world. They have not learned that correlation does not prove causation, and will not until they retire.
The loss of ozone from certain areas only means one thing! the ozone is traveling south or north, just like it did during the 80s or when…
The poles have become colder and the ozone is fluctuating, that is what you would expect from a geographical area that is sensitive to temperature or a periodical layer of interest./sarc~ish
When it gets too cold for ozone it moves to areas it CAN exist, from the northern hemisphere it moves south and from the southern hemisphere it moves north simultaneously.
Less ozone over the poles actually means a colder geographical area.
Double G.I.G.O, the pathetic last shriek of post modern pseudo science?
TomRude, try this . . .
http://prl.aps.org/pdf/PRL/v103/i22/e228501
Does Cosmic-Ray-Induced Heterogeneous Chemistry Influence Stratospheric Polar Ozone Loss?
27 Nov 2009
This lists 1 paper by Lu and 2 by Lu & Sanche
“This could be a real game-changer,” Polvani added.”
No doubt… If CO2 is shown to be of little consequence, we can keep the funding going with this new ‘game changer’!
Just The Facts says:
April 21, 2011 at 7:37 pm
“Here’s animation of the Polar Vortices on Venus:”
Aye, JTF, I’ve always believed that Venus had a fine pair … of polar vortices!
correlation doesn’t prove causation. ozone is produced by UV from the sun, which changes with the solar cycle. there is very little evidence that the ozone hole is due to anything but natural causes.
most likely cold air descending over the south pole is sweeping the ozone out of the atmosphere over the south pole and transporting it towards the equator, where it influences cloud formation. It is the cold over the south Pole, combined with solar activity that regulates ozone.
The Montreal protocol is not “saving” the ozone. It was put in place because it allowed a US company with a patent on the replacement gas to make a killing. Fear and panic was the marketing tool.
A more likely source of chlorine to deplete ozone is acid rain. Acid rain (sulfates) when mixed with sea-water binds with the sodium, which releases chlorine from the salt in the oceans.
Just The Facts says: April 21, 2011 at 8:14 pm
There’s been a persistent Arctic Polar Vortex; … but it’s about to breakdown
Correction, the Arctic Polar Vortex appears to have begun to breakdown around March 3oth;
Global – 10-hPa/mb Height Temperature Anomalies – Atmospheric Temperature Anomalies At Approximately 31,000 meters (101,700 feet) – NOAA
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/intraseasonal/temp10anim.gif
Global – 30-hPa/mb Height Temperature Anomalies – Atmospheric Temperature Anomalies At Approximately 23,700 meters (77,800 feet) – NOAA
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/intraseasonal/temp30anim.gif
Global – 50-hPa/mb Height Temperature Anomalies – Atmospheric Temperature Anomalies At Approximately 20,100 meters (66,000 feet)- NOAA
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/intraseasonal/temp50anim.gif
but it appears to have maintained some of its structure at lower altitudes;
Northern Hemisphere – 500-hPa /mb Height Anomalies – Atmospheric Pressure Anomalies At Approximately 5500 meters (18,000 feet)
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/intraseasonal/z500_nh_30d_anim.gif
They are mistaking cause with effect. Of course it is nothing else than another “model con job”: GIGO: “Garbage In, Gospell Out”.
When Dobson’s people in Halley Bay (and the French at Dumont D’Urville) noticed the ozone decrease in Antarctica in 1957 the named the phenomenon “The Southern Anomaly”, with no relation to any pollution or man-made chemicals.
I’m with Jim Cripwell (above). Here we have another non-validated model. As the article says, the ozone hole (not a total absence but thinning in reality) was “discovered” in the 1980s. Who’s to say it had not been there for eons? Free radical gathering species are spewed from volcanoes and there is a beauty right at the Sth Pole… the active Mt Erebus. Is there any involvement from that or didn’t that seem important in the rush to “do something”?
There have been recent reports that the present ‘hole’ is the largest ever seen. How can that be if CFC’s were the cause – they’ve been gone for 20+ years?
In 2007 Markus Rex, an atmosphere scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute, stated that at least 60% of ozone destruction at the poles seems to be due to an unknown mechanism that did not involve the traditionally accepted molecule, dichlorine peroxide. Does the IPCC have a clue? Really?
Translation:
“We resent the shift of funding from ozone hole studies and into Climate Science, so we’ve discovered that we are part of climate research and thus ought to be on the gravy train too…”
Climate catastrophe…blah blah blah…CO2…blah blah blah…ozone hole…blah blah blah…computer models…blah blah blah…proof that none of this is natural…silence
Whether or not there is any scientific merit in this paper strikes me as superfluous to the paper’s real value: I thought I would spell it out in simple terms so that even a politician might understand it.
Firstly, the reports are saying that the authors categorically admit that the ozone ‘hole’ has been a major cause of observed climate change (and, let’s face it, observed climate change has been minimal and non-cataclysmic during the industrial period). Secondly, the authors admit that the IPCC has taken no account of the climatic effects of the ozone ‘hole’. Thirdly, the authors admit amazement at the ways in which climate works.
The logical outcomes of these admissions are (i) industrial CO2 has a minimal effect on climate change; (ii) the science cannot be ‘settled’ as claimed; (iii) the climate is, as yet, something that nobody can claim to fully understand.
This inevitably and irrefutably renders any view based on the current CO2 orthodoxy as suspect.
As the ozone ‘hole’ has already been cured by the ban on CFCs, there is no need for any further political action. Alternatively, if you’re a slightly brighter politician and you’ve already worked out that the ozone ‘hole’ is a natural phenomenon, you’ll know that (a) you’ve already been had once and (b) as it’s a natural phenomenon, you still don’t need to do anything.
Except give us our taxes back…
Talk about light weight.
A loose correlation between models of the ozone “hole” with fluctuations in precipitation (NOTE – NOT TEMPERATURE!!) from two climate models. The reason for two climate models being that none of them ever get even close on predicting precipitation right, so let’s find two that happen to agree on this one small time period and one part of the planet and announce them as correct because they agree. We’ll ignore the time periods when they didn’t agree, the areas of the planet where they didn’t agree, and of course lost in all that noise is that by their own admission, the climate models do an abysmal job of modeling…. precipitation.
Good thing they didn’t go for THREE models in agreement. Because they likely had to go through every model there was just to find two.
Even more unfortunate, there might actually be some value in the correlated observations that is now just a pig covered in layers of lipstick to the point that no one remembers there was a pig under there somewhere. If the OBSERVED fluctuations in the ozone “hole” are loosely correlated with OBSERVED precipitation changed and the OBSERVED fluctuations in cosmic rays, then that’s rather interesting, deserves some real science to look into it, and no computer models at all needed to do it.
And I say “hole” because it isn’t a hole at all, it is an area of reduced concentration. The “hole” also doesn’t make a spit of difference in an ocean regarding surface exposure to UV either, the rays of the sun are at such a sharp angle at the poles that at that altitude they either get absorbed by crashing into O2 and O3 molecules, or they just zip on by and out to space. If you live at say 50N latitude and are worried about UV, worry about the ozone layer at about 30N latitude. No to mention that the
ozone “hole” physically HAS to exist at the poles and HAS to be much larger at the south pole than the north pole and that Dobson predicted that years before measurements started in such detail that the units they measure the ozone on are CALLED Dobson units.
Light weight. From the first mention of UV to the last words.
I take it back. It isn’t even light weight.
Nature News; 26th Sept 2007.
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070924/full/449382a.html
The following paper has got very little publicity as some of the most influential proponents of the consensus on the Ozone Hole are now obviously heavy weight obstructers to any publicity for this paper.
They are still around and they certainly are not going to admit that they either ripped the public off with fraudulent papers or were just too damn incompetent and too much of opportunists and rent seekers to track down and go against the easy earnings to spell out the truth.
And there is evidence apparently lost during the WW2 that the Japanese knew that something like an ozone hole existed in the Arctic and the Antarctic back in the late 1930’s when their military were preparing to launch armed aggression on their South Pacific neighbors and were running military orientated mapping and research projects like radio transmission tests everywhere across the south Pacific.
From Nature News;
Chemists poke holes in ozone theory
Reaction data of crucial chloride compounds called into question.
[quote]So Markus Rex, an atmosphere scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute of Polar and Marine Research in Potsdam, Germany, did a double-take when he saw new data for the break-down rate of a crucial molecule, dichlorine peroxide (Cl2O2). The rate of photolysis (light-activated splitting) of this molecule reported by chemists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, was extremely low in the wavelengths available in the stratosphere — almost an order of magnitude lower than the currently accepted rate. “This must have far-reaching consequences,” Rex says. “If the measurements are correct we can basically no longer say we understand how ozone holes come into being.” What effect the results have on projections of the speed or extent of ozone depletion remains unclear.
The rapid photolysis of Cl2O2 is a key reaction in the chemical model of ozone destruction developed 20 years ago. If the rate is substantially lower than previously thought, then it would not be possible to create enough aggressive chlorine radicals to explain the observed ozone losses at high latitudes, says Rex. The extent of the discrepancy became apparent only when he incorporated the new photolysis rate into a chemical model of ozone depletion. The result was a shock: at least 60% of ozone destruction at the poles seems to be due to an unknown mechanism, Rex told a meeting of stratosphere researchers in Bremen, Germany, last week.[/quote]
The whole of ozone depletion claims by CFC’s leading to the so called ozone hole were never actually proven out in a laboratory until quite recently and you see the results in that above Nature News article,
Nor were those claims of the CFC’s destroying ozone ever researched and substantiated in the field. It was all just the output of models with their unknown constraints and inputs mostly just guessed at by the modelers.
One prominent scientist with personal experience of this time later suggested that up to 80% of the papers on the ozone hole were either fraudulent or used made up data.
And it all cost an estimated total of $130 billion 1988 dollars but hey those researchers who got on the band wagon did really nicely didn’t they.
Doesn’t seem that much has changed in the science of so called climate change.
The IPCC’s Mario Molina and Susan Solomon made their names on this stuff, Molina got a No-bell prize for it. In 2007 the British Antarctic Survey issued a press release,
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/press/press_releases/press_release.php?id=303
“LARGE quantities of ozone-depleting chemicals have been discovered in the Antarctic atmosphere by researchers from the University of Leeds, the University of East Anglia, and the British Antarctic Survey.”
They found high concentrations of halogens – bromine and iodine oxides – which persist throughout the period when there is sunlight in Antarctica (August through May).
The source of the halogens is natural – sea-salt in the case of bromine, and in the case of iodine, almost certainly bright orange algae that coat the underside of the sea ice around the continent.
These halogens cause a substantial depletion in ozone above the ice surface. This affects the so-called oxidising capacity of the atmosphere – its ability to “clean itself” by removing certain – often man-made – chemical compounds. The iodine oxides also form tiny particles (a few nanometres in size), which can grow to form ice clouds, with a consequent impact on the local climate.
John Plane, professor of atmospheric chemistry at the University of Leeds, says: “Halogens in the lowest part of the atmosphere have important impacts on ozone depletion, the ability of the atmosphere to remove potentially harmful compounds, and aerosol formation. All these atmospheric phenomena are linked to climate change.”
This is from “Another day, another dollar- CFC’s and the UN, http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/another_day_another_dollar.html
NATURAL SOURCES OF CFC’S?
It is emphatically claimed by the EPA and repeated in all discourse on the issue, that there are no natural sources of CFC’s. This geologist says differently, http://cfc.geologist-1011.net/
If one chooses to measure the gases emerging from volcanic vents instead of taking a politician’s word for it, one discovers that volcanoes produce a variety of halocarbons, including CFCs. This fact, along with other natural sources of CFCs including sponges, other marine animals, bacteria (both marine & terrestrial), fungi (both marine & terrestrial), plants (both marine & terrestrial), lichen, insects, is so well documented that it is the subject of ongoing textbook publication (Gribble, 2003; Jordan, 2003). Stoiber et al. (1971) first measured and documented CFCs venting from Santiaguito in Guatemala.
Since, (then) there have been many studies corroborating the volcanic emission of CFCs (Isidorov et al, 1990; Isidorov et al., 1993; Jordon et al., 2000; Schwandner et al., 2000; Schwandner et al., 2002; Schwandner et al., 2004; Frische et al., 2006).”
In 2006, the WMO said the Ozone Hole wouldn’t be “healed” until 2065, that should make sure of a long and happy retirement and a good pension.
“First time that ozone depletion is shown to impact the entire circulation of the southern hemisphere”
Nonsense. I knew this from a couple of articles and models in 1987.
Seems to me that modelling of this sort should be used to design experiments that would test various hypotheses concerning ozone levels and observed changes therein. That could be expensive, of course. These days, if you create a model which correctly back-casts observations, that’s considered an experiment. Too often, it’s just assumed that, if the model back-casts correctly, it’ll forecast correctly. Might be something here, might not. But then the ‘model’ for the ozone hole predicted a much longer duration than has been observed. That might suggest that the model is wrong, but I don’t see anyone touting that interpretation. Much too easy to claim that the Montreal Protocol did great work, and that the next grant application for a similar problem should be fast-tracked through the approval process. These ‘results’ would be far more convincing if someone actually did the experiments, proposed the mechanism, and gave everyone else a chance to demolish the underlying hypothesis. That’s what we used to call science. Models are what we did with the science, after we had the data from our experiments, in order to figure out which experiments should be done next. Call me old-fashioned, but I think that procedure had merit.
ROM
You and others keep pointing to that Rex paper from 2007,
I repeat, if you’re going to cite the 2007 reference, you have to cite the 2009 one too.
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090507/full/news.2009.456.html
Jim Masterson says:
April 21, 2011 at 12:05 pm
1. The ozone hole was seen first when they developed instrumentation capable of seeing it. They have no idea if the ozone hole predates the instrumentality.
It is most likely a recurrent phenomenon there, quite independent of our industrial emissions.
Amer. Zool. (2001) 41 (1): 3-16.
doi: 10.1093/icb/41.1.3
Influence of Ozone-Related Increases in Ultraviolet Radiation on Antarctic Marine Organisms
Deneb Karentz & Isidro Bosch
“It is only obvious that ozone depletion has not had a catastrophic effect in the Antarctic region”
In other words: Ecosystems around Antarctica are well adapted to increased UV-B radiation levels. It could not possibly be the case if it were the first time in geologic history they’ve experienced an “ozone hole”. It takes ages for evolution to develop active mechanisms to fight UV-B caused genetic and eye damage, still, the protective behavioral and molecular traits were present in the local biota right from the start of the present cycle.
As several already said, the researchers probably reversed cause and effect. The amount of ozone production, mainly in the tropical stratosphere, is heavily influenced by the solar cycle: during solar maxima, some 10% more UV is produced by the sun. Thus more ozone is formed, the temperature of the stratosphere increases and the jet streams are pushed towards the poles. The latter influences rain patterns and the polar vortices. Thus at the current (still) low solar activity, we see an equatorward shift of the jet streams and a build up of the polar vortices and hence an increase in ozone depletion when there is sunlight and the stratospheric ice cloud temperatures are low enough (below -80 degr.C) at both poles.
There is no physical mechanism that links the ozone hole as cause to the jet stream shift, the opposite is far more plausible…
Walter Schneider says, over and over…
Walter, note that sometimes even a single word can route a comment through the spam filter from which the moderators always rescue it. Show patience, sir… and thank you for a very interesting (if somewhat repetitive) read…
E.M.Smith says: (April 21, 2011 at 11:05 pm) Translation: “We resent the shift of funding from ozone hole studies …
Noted. Approved. Appreciated.
This attempt at getting the Ozone Hole into climate scare has a valid reason for climate activists!
Showing that CFCs, and thus evil humanity of the industrialised, capitalist nations, caused this, had a resounding success, evidenced by the Montreal Protocol.
Now that CO2 and all the alarms seem to have stopped scaring everybody silly and willing to pay through the nose to alleviate the guilt, going back to this earlier and successful Protocol is simply the fall-back position to start a new scare and to pile on the guilt so that the money having to be paid by Western Nations doesn’t dry up.
CO2, ozone, the next climate disturbance factor produced by evil Western Nations are being used simply to wring more and more money out of the developed nations, and to bring their economies to their respective knees at the same time.
It has got nothing at all to do with proper science!
(Perhaps we should start making a list of the next factors likely to disturb the climate, which can be blamed solely on the USA and the EU …)
Is there someone here that can answer this question?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/08/new-rate-of-stratospheric-photolysis-questions-ozone-hole/
The story linked to above pokes some pretty big holes in the Ozone hole-cliamte connection.
Columbia University is so compromised by AGW extremist belief that I would doubt anything written there until some skeptics start standing up to the peer pressure to explain everything by way of human influence.
Also, this theory, if true, means that the IPCC / CO2 obsession claims are false.
If correct, this fits nicely with my proposition that the solar induced atmospheric chemistry changes acting primarily via differential changes in ozone quantities at different levels in the atmosphere can change the vertical temperature profile, thereby altering the speed of the hydrological cycle.
In the process we also see shifts in the jetstreams and indeed shifts in all the main air circulation components giving changes in total cloudiness, global albedo and the rate of energy acquisition by the oceans.
Viv Evans says:
April 22, 2011 at 3:44 am
(Perhaps we should start making a list of the next factors likely to disturb the climate, which can be blamed solely on the USA and the EU …)
That mission is already accomplished, although the solution includes Australia and perhaps New Zealand on top of the EU & US.
It is democracy we should get rid of as soon as possible.
openDemocracy free thinking for the world
Democracy and climate change: a story of failure
David Shearman, 7 November 2007
“The political order of liberal democracy is incapable of rising to the challenge of global environmental catastrophe”.
“The case for an authoritarianism of experts has been explored with the philosophical conclusion that continuing absolute liberty cannot be preferable to life […] It may well be non-western states (including China) will find ways to deliver while the west continues to display its extreme liberty with ineffectual debate and a surrender to powerful interests in its grinding democratic institutions.”
/ bitter sarc off
Here is my full description again for those who have not yet seen it:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=6645
“How The Sun Could Control Earth’s Climate”.
I have refined it more recently in a version published at Irish Weather Online but currently the link is not working.
A couple of charts.
The UAH South and North Polar lower stratosphere temperatures. Both poles show the same kind of instability in the winter (while it was assumed hat the South Pole vortex was more stable – I’m not so sure anymore).
http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/8154/uahpolarstrat.png
And then, the actual measured stratospheric Ozone over Antarctica going back to 1957. I don’t believe you would have seen this before (because they usually just show us some big blue hole over the South Pole).
I don’t find much of pattern (tied to volcanoes or the above temperature anomalies) and it doesn’t look like that big of a problem when one views the actual data.
http://img851.imageshack.us/img851/1141/southpolestratozone.png
Ozone hole huh, I’ve just watched the Arctic Blast, you know a movie that “explains” this, just like the Day After Tomorrow and dozens of others. It’s so nice that movies educate the sheep.
Here is the updated link to the most recent version:
http://www.irishweatheronline.com/irishweather/how-the-sun-could-control-earths-temperature/290.html
*****
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
April 22, 2011 at 2:25 am
There is no physical mechanism that links the ozone hole as cause to the jet stream shift, the opposite is far more plausible…
*****
That’s my impression, too.
I noted the “Ozone Hole” and surrounding measurements of Dobsons appear to form a pattern consistent with areas of low pressure and ridges of high pressure circulating the Antarctic. The thought occurred to me that this might be associated with oceanic Chlorides and Fluorides from the raging seas of 40 plus deg. S.
No investigation appears to havebeen made of this.
hmm? how much of the added Chlorine they keep dumping in our water would be adding to the chlorine in the air?
gee heaps.
Max Hugoson says:
OZONE does NOT “protect us” from UV radiation. OZONE (O3) is FORMED by high end UV radiation hitting the atmosphere.
So what you are saying is that it is process of forming ozone which “protects” from UV. Indeed it might be more accurate to say that O2 is what is important since this is what actually removes the UV photons.
UK Marcus says:
April 21, 2011 at 3:58 pm
What creates ozone in the upper atmosphere? I understand it to be the action of the wavelength of UVB in sunlight breaking apart molecules of O2, which then reform, in a continuous process, sometimes as O3 and also O2.
What do the antarctic and arctic have something in common with each other, and nowhere else on the planet, besides a lot of ice? A 6 month day and a 6 month night.
One obvious question is why no Arctic hole?
Most likely that explanation is to be found in that one pole is an ocean surrounded by land whereas the other is a landmass surrounded by ocean.
Though if chloride ions are significent in forming a hole you’d expect one to occur more easily in the Arctic…
Jimbo says:
April 22, 2011 at 4:57 am
Just curious here but hasn’t most of the CFCs been produced in the northern hemisphere and used there? If so wouldn’t the larger hole in the Ozone layer be in the Northern polar regions.
Is there someone here that can answer this question?
Even when most of the CFC’s were used in the NH, these are distributed all over the world over time (1-2 years to reach the South Pole). CFC’s are much heavier than air, but once mixed into the air by wind, they stay mixed, due to the Brownian motion (the collisions with other air molecules which carry much heavier particulates everywhere). CFC’s even reach the stratosphere, mainly via the tropical deep convection around thunderstorms.
The difference between the poles is in the temperature: the main depletion is on the surface of ice clouds at -80 degr.C in spring with the first sunrays (that is/was the theory, as Cl2O2 only freezes out at such low temperature). Such deep temperatures readily exist in Antarctica, but only sporadic in the Arctic.
“Specifically, we show that precipitation in the Southern subtropics in austral
summer increases significantly when climate models are integrated with reduced polar ozone concentrations.” I live in the aforesaid subtropics, and over 100 years of data has failed to reveal any trend in precipitation in either summer or winter. If it didn’t happen when the world warmed over this period, how come the models predict it is going to happen? Also, the ozone hole last for a few weeks in early spring – how come it’s effect lasts all summer? The thought that the models might be wrong does not appear to have occurred to these boffins.
My goodness, I thought it had been raining a lot in the Amazon long before the 1970s. Its good to get rid of such urban legends. And yes, the climate change can be readily observed: the Amazon and presumably DRC (Africa) jungles jumped out off the ground in 40 years and amazed the parched locals. Also, with ozone capable of causing such huge changes, why do they need CO2 as well to cause change.
I guess the science wasn’t settled.
Solid according to who?
Basing the study on two defective and incomplete climate models instead of one does not qualify the work as having “solid results”. I’m sure if the study was saying taking ozone into account proved CO2 caused more warming that previously thought this study would be being slated instead of praised. Yet another study that pretends to study climate but looks at the output of computer models in the place of data.
It’s encouraging that some are finally looking beyond CO2 but the perceived success of Montreal was probably what got them the idea of creating the IPCC circus.
Actually, I was not even aware that anyone had proved there was not a ozone hole before we noticed one and started looking at it. Maybe it is a cyclic event that we never noticed. I recall a similar “discovery” in the 70’s that the gulf stream was slowing down and risked disappearing altogether bringing catastrophic canadian style weather to the whole of Europe. Then they found out it was not an uncontrolled decline but a cycle.
Maybe if we know more about the changes in the ozone layer it could explain some other trends.
In short this study just goes to show how incomplete and totally inadequate all these models are. There are two things to ask when models are described as “state-of-the-art”: firstly exactly what that “state” is and second why this is based on art instead of science.
Still , for once they’re not looking at CO2 , it’s encouraging.
Bill Illis says:
April 22, 2011 at 5:25 am
“A couple of charts.”
Any chance you could post the source of your data for those plots (particularly the ozone, I’m sure I can find the UAH data).
This does rather back up my off the cuff suggestion in my last post. It look like it could be cyclic with about a 60y period. In any case the warming kicks in around 1970 and it seems flat since around 2000. At least that matched the trends in surface temperature better than CO2 which has not flattened out.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
April 22, 2011 at 8:57 am
“Even when most of the CFC’s were used in the NH, these are distributed all over the world over time (1-2 years to reach the South Pole). CFC’s are much heavier than air, but once mixed into the air by wind, they stay mixed, due to the Brownian motion (the collisions with other air molecules which carry much heavier particulates everywhere). CFC’s even reach the stratosphere, mainly via the tropical deep convection around thunderstorms.”
So the concentrations of CFCs throughout the atmosphere are as great as the concentrations over the Antarctic? And the concentrations of other gases that are as heavy as CFCs are as great as the concentrations of CFCs over the Antarctic?
memoryvault says:
April 21, 2011 at 5:42 pm
Direwolf (and others)
Dupont Chemicals held the patent on CFC’s which were about to expire.
[snip]
Really, go a little lighter on the conspiracy theories. The Montreal Protocol was 44 years too late to salvage Frigidaire’s monoply on CFC formulations (actually a consortium of Frigidaire, DuPont and General Motors but the patent was assigned to Frigidaire). HCFC’s and HFC’s have been around for years. Their problem has always been that they are more expensive and less efficient than CFC’s. Current patent advantages accrue to companies finding ways to produce them more cheaply and developing mixtures with better thermodynamic efficiencies.
“which has been called the single most successful international agreement to date”
lol
That’s a quote from Kofi Annan, the guy who ran the UN at the time. Nothing like patting yourself on the back a bit? I guess the Montreal treaty is the most successfull unless you look at a few others such as Versailles, Geneva Conventions, NATO, Congress of Vienna, Maastricht Treaty, the Westphalia treaties, and maybe START 1-3.
I guess carbon dioxide is more important than global thermonuclear war?
The sun affects the size of the polar air masses via chemical processes involving ozone responding to changes in the mix of solar wavelengths and particles which also affects the size of the Antarctic ozone ‘hole’. The oceans separately affect the size of the tropical air masses and the climate zones shift to reflect the interplay over time.
Sometimes sun and oceans are in phase to supplement each others effects, sometimes out of phase to offset each others effects.
Perceived climate change at the surface is simply the net outturn of the two processes.
All new science boils a multitude of phenomena down to a simple interplay of a small number of variables. Einstein reduced so much to a simple equation involving the energy content of matter and the speed of light.
As regards Earth’s climate everything can be reduced to solar input as modified by the Earth’s internal and independently variable climate responses in the atmosphere and in the oceans.
CO2 and CFC quantities are virtually irrelevant
Magnetic effects might well be involved because as the level of solar activity varies so does the proportion of solar energy arriving as charged particles and the Earth’s magnetic field lines bring such particles in at the poles.
There then seems to be an effect on ozone quantities at the higher levels of the atmosphere such that more charged particles during a time of active sun increase ozone destruction above 45km.
Meanwhile more UV during a time of active sun appears to increase ozone creation below 45km.
However the net effect for the whole atmospheric column appears to be the higher level effect so that overall there is a net cooling of mesosphere and stratosphere when the sun is more active and a net warming of mesosphere and stratosphere when the sun is less active.
That is the only scenario that fits both the observed jetstream behaviour and the recent findings publicised by Joanna Haigh et al
P. Solar says:
April 22, 2011 at 11:13 am
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The ozone data came from here. Lots of data at this link.
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/met/jds/ozone/
Lightening is fairly continuous, globally. Ever smell that garlic odor after a lighteneing strike? That’s ozone which is continuously being produced around the world. Also, by the way, anti-matter and gamma rays (reverse cosmic rays, if you will) at the same time, we just found out, (TGF”s) are produced by lightening, though how is still up for grabs. Lots of stuff going on that we do not yet understand completely nor do we yet grasp the complex interactions of these and other climatic events. So, the ozone hole along with our climate in general or any changes there to, is not proven to be due to our deoderants or freon or any other single or multiple happening that anyone has been able to actually, scientically and statistically prove within any reasonable doubt through observation. Goes for CO2 as well.
This 2005 paper by JAMES K. ANGELL, of NOAA/Air Resources Laboratory, Silver Spring, Maryland “Changes in the 300-mb North Circumpolar Vortex, 1963–2001”
“summarizes the changes in size of the 300-mb north circumpolar vortex, and quadrants, for the full period of record, 1963–2001, where the size has been defined by planimetering the area poleward of contours in the jet stream core. A contracted vortex has tended to be a deep vortex in winter but a shallow vortex in summer. During 1963–2001 there was a statistically significant decrease in vortex size of 1.5% per decade, the decrease in size of Western Hemisphere quadrants being twice that of Eastern Hemisphere quadrants. A significant increase in Arctic Oscillation (AO) index accompanies the significant decrease in vortex size, but since the vortex contracts appreciably in all four seasons, whereas the positive trend in the AO index is mainly in winter, the vortex cannot serve as a proxy for the AO index. The evidence for vortex contraction at the time of the 1976–77 regime shift is not conclusive, but there is good evidence for a 6% increase in vortex size due to the 1991 Pinatubo eruption. There is little change in vortex size following the 1982 El Chichon eruption, however. Because on average there is a significant 4% contraction of the vortex following an El Niño, it is proposed that the vortex expansion to be expected following the 1982 El Chichon eruption has been contravened by the contraction following the strong 1982–83 El Niño. There is little relation between vortex size and phase of the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO), and the evidence for a contracted vortex near 11-yr sunspot maxima is tenuous because the vortex record extends through only three full sunspot cycles. There is a highly significant tendency for opposite vortex quadrants 0°–90°E and 90°W–180° to vary in size together, indicating either a pulsating polar vortex or the propagation of planetary wavenumber 2.”
“The vortex trace in Fig. 4 shows about a 5% increase in vortex size immediately following the Pinatubo eruption in the summer of 1991. Based on the 54-station network, the binomially smoothed north temperate 850–300-mb temperature decreased by about 0.8 K at this time, compatible with this increase in vortex size. Because it is generally accepted that the Pinatubo eruption did indeed cause a cooling of the troposphere, even on a global scale (e.g., Free and Angell 2002; Fig. 6), there seems to be no reason to doubt that the increase in vortex size following this eruption is due to the eruption.”
“Much more impressive is the significant tendency (nonoverlapping vertical bars) for the vortex to be most expanded one–two seasons before Niño-3 SST maximum, and most contracted about 1 yr after this maximum. Figure 6 shows that it is quadrant 90°W–180° (El Niño quadrant) that has the most significant tendency to be expanded near SST maximum, a finding also of Frauenfeld and Davis (2000, 2002), and contracted thereafter. Opposite quadrant 0°–90°E also shows a good tendency for contraction following the Niño-3 SST maximum.”
“The right-hand diagram in Fig. 5 indicates a tendency for contraction of the vortex near sunspot maxima, but the annual sizes are erratic, not surprising since there are only three full 11-yr solar cycles available. Figure 7 shows vortex size as a function of sunspot number, but differentiated according to whether the vortex size is in the east or west wind phase of the QBO (top trace in Fig. 4). In agreement with the findings of Labitzke (1987) and van Loon and Labitzke (1988), there is more of a tendency for vortex contraction with increase in sunspot number in the west wind than east wind phase of the QBO with, in the west wind case, significant differences in vortex size (nonoverlapping horizontal bars) for sunspot numbers less than 50 in comparison
with sunspot numbers between 100 and 150. An informative summary of this and other findings related to the possible connection between stratospheric circulation and sunspot number can be found in a recently published book by Labitzke and van Loon (1999).”
http://www.arl.noaa.gov/documents/JournalPDFs/Angell.JClimate2006.pdf
Per this September 2003 paper by Henk Eskes, Arjo Segers, and Peter van Velthoven of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), De Bilt, The Netherlands, “Ozone Forecasts of the Stratospheric Polar Vortex Splitting Event in September 2002”
“The southern hemisphere major warming event in September 2002 has led to a break-up of the vortex in the middle and higher stratosphere and a corresponding splitting of the ozone hole. Daily 3D ozone forecasts, produced at KNMI with a tracer transport and assimilation model based on the ECMWF dynamical forecasts, provided an accurate prediction of this event a week prior to the actual break-up of the vortex. The ozone forecast model contains parametrizations for gas phase and heterogeneous chemistry. Initial states for the forecast are obtained from the assimilation of near-real time ozone data from the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME) on ERS-2. In this paper we discuss the ozone forecasts and ozone analyses as produced before, during and after the event. These fields
are compared with ground based Dobson, ozone sonde and TOMS observations. The total ozone comparisons show that the location of the vortex edge is generally well described by the 5 to 7 day forecasts in September and October. The GOME assimilation compared with TOMS shows a good correspondence concerning vortex location and ozone features, but also reflect clear differences in the average ozone amount between the two retrieval schemes. The assimilation system produces realistic ozone profiles, apart from a systematic underestimation of ozone around 150 hPa inside the vortex in August-October.”
“the splitting of the vortex had a dramatic impact on the ozone hole, reducing it’s size and mixing ozone depleted vortex air with midlatitude air.”
In September 2002 the South Pole vortex showed a rapidly developing distortion and a subsequent split of the vortex in two more or less equal parts (Allen et al., 2003 ). On September 18 the vortex looked normal. It was displaced slightly away from the pole, but not in an unusual manner. From 21 to 23 September the vortex rapidly elongated. The process resulted in a split vortex on 24-26 September. At this time the ozone hole had been transformed into two smaller ”ozone holes” of nearly equal size. After the split the vortex remnant on the Southern Atlantic slowly gained strength and moved back to the South Pole during the first two weeks of October. The second remnant vortex over the Pacific rapidly weakened and the ozone depleted air mixed with mid-latitude air with higher ozone mixing ratios.”
“In late September and early October, Syowa is located inside the (split) vortex. Ozone values remain low until about 10 October. Then the small remaining vortex moves from the South Atlantic towards the South pole, and ozone values increase. The ozone history at Arrival Heights is very different. As soon as the vortex starts to elongate, around 21 September, the ozone hole edge passes and ozone values jump from about 170 DU to high values of about 400 DU within one day. Ozone stays very high for more than two weeks and only around 10-12 October low, ozone depleted column values of less than 200 DU are abruptly found again. This is again related to the migration of the center of the small vortex to the pole. After this the vortex weakens and moves in the direction of South America, and the ozone at Arrival Heights reaches values of around 350 DU.”
http://www.knmi.nl/~eskes/papers/jas1039_eskes_pp.pdf
This site offers Polar Vortex Forecasts;
http://db.cger.nies.go.jp/gem/moni-e/analysis/pv/index_stras.html
the Southern Hemisphere ones appear to be broken, but the Northern Hemisphere Potential Vorticity Forecast seems to work:
http://db.cger.nies.go.jp/gem/dl_graph/index_nhimg_e.php
This site offers a gallery of Stratospheric Polar Vortices;
http://www.jhu.edu/~dwaugh1/gallery_stratosphere.html
and this site offers Polar Vortex breakdown simulations:
http://www.vets.ucar.edu/vg/PV/index.shtml
Bill Illis says:
April 22, 2011 at 12:03 pm
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/met/jds/ozone/
Thanks for the link , very informative site. Here’s one thing it reports about the accuracy of models on ozone (and even the origin measurements have a huge uncertainly):
Bill Illis says:
April 22, 2011 at 12:03 pm
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/met/jds/ozone/
Thanks for the link , very informative site. Here’s one thing it reports about the accuracy of models on ozone (and even the origin measurements have a huge uncertainly):
That’s 100 DU of a value that ranges around 280-480 DU.
Just The Facts.
Thanks for that useful data from Angell 2005 and Eskes et al 2003.
It appears to be entirely consistent with my propositions.
Forget radiative physics. Chemical processes in the upper atmosphere are the real players in the solar effect on the global energy budget and the effect of those processes can be supplemented or offset by other internal system effects such as short term volcanic events and longer term internal ocean cycles.
All Leif Svalgaard’s objections to a solar effect are dealt with because the processes involved are chemical and not radiative and the variations involved are all essentially internal system features although showing high sensitivity to small solar variations.
DJ Hawkins:
I dislike conspiracy theories and am only interested in the facts, but Wikipedia tells me:
“In 1978 the United States banned the use of CFCs such as Freon in aerosol cans, the beginning of a long series of regulatory actions against their use. The critical DuPont manufacturing patent for Freon (“Process for Fluorinating Halohydrocarbons”, U.S. Patent #3258500) was set to expire in 1979. In conjunction with other industrial peers DuPont sponsored efforts such as the “Alliance for Responsible CFC Policy” to question anti-CFC science, but in a turnabout in 1986 DuPont, with new patents in hand, publicly condemned CFCs.[9] DuPont representatives appeared before the Montreal Protocol urging that CFCs be banned worldwide and stated that their new HCFCs would meet the worldwide demand for refrigerants.[9]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorofluorocarbon
Is this a classic example of reversing cause and effect? Or are they really just that stupid?
“Theo Goodwin says:
April 22, 2011 at 11:28 am
So the concentrations of CFCs throughout the atmosphere are as great as the concentrations over the Antarctic? And the concentrations of other gases that are as heavy as CFCs are as great as the concentrations of CFCs over the Antarctic?”
It is my understanding that basic physical laws of diffusion make all gases disperse more or less evenly throughout the atmosphere. I researched radon for example, whose molar mass is 222, versus an average of 29 for air, and it is fairly evenly distributed throughout the atmosphere. There is no “magnet” that attracts CFCs to the Antarctic versus anywhere else. It is just that the Antarctic also has extremely cold temperatures at times that sort of act as a “catalyst” for ozone reactions.
Stephen Wilde says:
April 23, 2011 at 12:15 am
Let’s hope so. Maybe we will have some actual physical hypotheses to replace the grand assumptions that now dominate so-called climate science. Too bad NASA cannot get its satellites to fly.
The key here is this is a process patent, not a composition patent. Folks had been making CFC based refrigerants for 50 years previously. I’ll grant that there was some marketing gamesmanship on DuPont’s part, but they weren’t the only ones who would be making HCFC’s. I’m guessing that there was a lot of “let’s jump rather than be pushed” thinking. If CFC’s were going the way of the dinosaur, you might as well try and get in the front of the marketing curve.
I’ve been following the AGW debate for years, and have recently wondered whether the “ozone hole” theory might suffer from some of the same shortcomings seen in global warming. I’ve done some basic googling and have a little knowledge on the subject now, but I am keenly aware of how easy it is to be fooled by websites with a hidden agenda. Are there any “Steve McIntyre’s” out there who specialize in ozone depletion theory? Is ozone depletion as much of a rat’s nest as AGW?
Thanks for any links to reliable, objective websites.
Dan
Photoshop Killer can tell you whether your image was Photoshopped. Just submit the suspicious image and you can get the result. JPEG file’s exif tags are used to do such classifications.