From MSNBC: WELLINGTON, New Zealand — International efforts to phase out the use of chlorofluorocarbons and other ozone-depleting substances may be paying off, according to research revealed Friday by the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand.
The Antarctica ozone hole is the smallest it has been in the past five years, NIWA said.
While a one-year reduction in the ozone hole can’t indicate a recovery stage, NIWA’s atmospheric experts say the new information adds to a pattern of less severe ozone holes in recent years.
Satellite data combined with ground-base measurements, including the Antarctica New Zealand Arrival Heights observatory near Scott Base, show the hole reached a maximum area of about 22 million square kilometers (about 8.5 million square miles) and a 27 million ton deficit of ozone this year, compared with 24 million square kilometers (about 9.3 million square miles) and a 35 million ton deficit last year.
The largest hole, according to NIWA, was 29 million square kilometers (about 11.2 million square miles) and a 43 million ton deficit, recorded in 2000 and then repeated in 2006.
“We see a lot of year-to-year variation in ozone holes, caused by differences in atmospheric temperature and circulation,” said NIWA atmospheric scientist Stephen Wood in a prepared statement. “So we can’t definitively say the ozone hole is improving from one new year of observations.”
“However, we have now had a few years in succession with less severe holes,” Wood said. “That is an indication we may be beginning to see a recovery.”
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More at MSNBC
Oh, of course, because if the ozone hole is largely affected by the output effect from the sun or the lack of such outburst effect, they don’t get Big Funding instead they’d only get back to small funding, naturally, when it’s all natural to them.
How can scientist be serious if they don’t make serious science they can be proud of and take seriously.
Those who say that it is “obvious” that the ozone hole is due to a lack of sunlight in winter should take note that the main Antarctic “hole” appears in the southern spring, not winter.
S. W. must have missed the fact that the Pinatubo hole in the NH closed up again.
That’s the most effective rebuttal of the Kiwi paper that there possibly could be! Clearly, natural trends are the driving force. It has nothing to do with CFCs!
That’s good to know since next year I’m sure the hole will be the largest on record, necessitating the complete phaseout of automotive and residential refrigeration.
LOL
have a look at the largest ozone hole ever observed – on 24 September 2006.
http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/daily.php?date=2006-09-24
Hmmm.
Looks like I was fooled by warmist propaganda into thinking there was an Arctic ozone hole problem in addition to the Antarctic one rather than just preceived excess ozone depletion at the north pole:
http://www.theozonehole.com/arcticozone.htm
“An Arctic Ozone Hole, if similar in size to the Antarctic Ozone Hole, could expose over 700+ million people, wildlife and plants to dangerous UV ray levels. The likely hood of this happening seems inevitable based on the deterioration of ozone layer caused by the effects of global warming on the upper atmosphere.”
Turned out to be wholly wrong after all. Just like Ms. Signe’s attempts at speculation.
Whether I’m right or wrong I’m performing as well as (if wrong) or better than (if right) than the so called professionals.
Can we really rely on Leif et al ?
sunsettommy says:
December 7, 2010 at 6:39 am
There were Ozone “holes” spotted back in the late 1950′s too.Maybe it is an irregular occurrence over time?
———-
You’re making thus up.
The instrumentation was not in place then.
Leif Svalgaard says:
December 7, 2010 at 10:01 am
“Figure 1 shows reductions in stratospheric chlorine levels compared to total ozone through time.”
I thought it looked a pretty good fit, until I looked at the timeline and realized that the actual measured data were not conclusive by any stretch. It will be interesting to see how it fills out over time.
This is just ozone hole weather, not ozone hole climate.
http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/index.html
The hole was much, much smaller in 2002.
This press release looks suspiciously timed to pretend that international action can ‘solve’ global climate ‘problems’.
“For each one Ozone molecule in the mesosphere there are a thousand ozone molecules in the stratosphere. Doesn’t matter what you do to that lone molecule in the mesosphere.”
Each ozone molecule less in the mesosphere will allow one more ozone molecule in the stratosphere to be destroyed.
Less molecules of ozone in the mesosphere will encourage more molecules of ozone to drift up from the stratosphere.
In addition there could well be currently unknown or inadequately quantified processes going on to enhance the effects.
The ozone holes grew when the sun was more active and are now shrinking when the sun is less active. As DCC and BillD say the anticipated rate of reduction in CFCs is admitted by CFC proponents to be far too slow to explain these recent results.
Even Ms Signe anticipated continued cooling of the stratosphere but it did not happen. Stratosphere temperatures have been recovering since the mid 90s as the sun became less active.
Haigh points out increasing ozone above 45km with a less active sun which implies warming up there
Existing assumptions have been trashed by observations.
Once the impossible has been excluded then whatever remains however implausible must be the truth.
Tom T says:
December 7, 2010 at 7:52 am
BillD “This is a topic with essentially no controversy among main stream scientists.”
Oh here we go again science by consensus.
————–
Yes here we go again. There is a consensus of evidence. Evidence, evidence and more evidence tends to carry more weight than a consensus of random bloggers shooting their mouths off.
LazyTeenager says:
December 7, 2010 at 1:41
pmsunsettommy says:
December 7, 2010 at 6:39 am
There were Ozone “holes” spotted back in the late 1950′s too.Maybe it is an irregular occurrence over time?
———-
You’re making thus up.
The instrumentation was not in place then.
http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/6/3627/2006/acpd-6-3627-2006-print.pdf
An addition in 1958 was a sensor of surface ozone. The sensor was designed and
built at the Clarendon Laboratory, and was similar to the 16 ozone sondes successfully
flown on balloons at Halley in 1958 in being a prototype of the later Brewer-Mast sonde (Brewer and Milford, 1960).
Too Lazy to Google?
Leif Svalgaard says:
December 7, 2010 at 9:29 am
It is solar activity that creates the ozone in the first place. And 2010 is the most active of the last five years…
Not according to the SEM satellite that measures EUV.
Thanks for that link Billy Liar.
This extract is intriguing:
“If these 1958 measurements had been remembered when ozone-loss episodes in
spring in the Arctic were first discovered in the 1980s, they would have dispelled speculation that the Arctic episodes were anthropogenic in origin.”
Any comments ?
Oh LazyTeenager, you are good for a laugh some days.
This, and other corrections to your faulty perception of science, can be read at http://junkscience.com/Ozone/ozone_seasonal.html
Stephen Wilde says:
December 7, 2010 at 1:36 pm
Turned out to be wholly wrong after all. Just like Ms. Signe’s attempts at speculation: “Yes, Leif she had some thoughts in 2006 as follows:
“During the next few years, ozone levels in the Arctic will be strongly influenced by stratospheric temperature, possibly resulting in delayed recovery or record-low ozone observations”.
That is the exact opposite of what has actually happened.
No, the recovery was indeed slow [some think it has not even occurred]. Anyway Betsy and Signe has an update: http://www.eoearth.org/article/Future_changes_in_ozone_in_the_Arctic
Can we really rely on Leif et al ?
Absolutely.
Stephen Wilde says:
December 7, 2010 at 1:50 pm
Each ozone molecule less in the mesosphere will allow one more ozone molecule in the stratosphere to be destroyed, and still leave 999 others unaffected. Get real, now.
In addition there could well be currently unknown or inadequately quantified processes going on to enhance the effects.
Since they are unknown, they could go the other way. You want to rely on unknown effects to support a hypothesis without a mechanism. As Al Gore says: “if you don’t know anything, everything is possible”.
Stratosphere temperatures have been recovering since the mid 90s as the sun became less active.
From http://www.agu.org/journals/ABS/2009/2008JD010421.shtml
“An updated analysis of observed stratospheric temperature variability and trends is presented on the basis of satellite, radiosonde, and lidar observations […] Temperature changes in the lower stratosphere show cooling of ∼0.5 K/decade over much of the globe for 1979–2007 […] The results show mean cooling of 0.5–1.5 K/decade during 1979–2005, with the greatest cooling in the upper stratosphere near 40–50 km […]
Existing assumptions have been trashed by observations.
With reference to above, no.
Once the impossible has been excluded then whatever remains however implausible must be the truth.
Once pseudo-scientific wishful thinking has been excluded whatever remains however contrary to that must be the truth.
Stephen Wilde says:
December 7, 2010 at 2:29 pm
Stephen,
The paper is about surface levels of ozone. I used it because it also states that ozone sondes were flown on balloons from Halley in the 50’s thus dispelling LazyTeenager’s notion that ‘the instrumentation was not in place then’.
The mechanism of the destruction of ozone catalyzed by bromine compounds from the bromine ions in sea salt is unlikely to be relevant to stratospheric ozone (but I’m not an expert).
The comment you extracted from the paper does reveal that people do tend to jump to the anthropogenic conclusion which is not necessarily correct.
Those of you interested in the actual observations regarding ozone over Antarctica may want to look at this web page which gives the historical data:
http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/facts/history.html
Note that there are data from 1957 onwards. Note that the ‘ozone hole’ refers not to the earlier data but to the decline observed from 1980 onwards.
When you see a contour map of the ozone hole, the boundary is drawn on the 220 DU (Dobson Units) marker. That is because, to quote from another page on that site,
Anyone who thinks that the ozone hole forms in winter should look at the graph on this page:
http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/meteorology/index.html
The “hole” isn’t a hole at all, but a reduction to about 50% of the “expected” level, whatever that is. How do we know that the “hole” isn’t the natural condition for the atmosphere over the Antarctic?
Apart from that, the supposed effect of CFCs on ozone in the upper atmosphere is a chemical one. If CFCs react with ozone (which is highly reactive) as postulated, how then is the half-life “over 50 years” as claimed? Sounds like the magical residency time for CO2, which despite exchanging about 25% of atmospheric content with the oceans annually, is claimed to be from “centuries to thousands of years” in IPeCaC AR4.
Leif Svalgaard says:
December 7, 2010 at 2:59 pm
Stephen Wilde says:
December 7, 2010 at 1:36 pm
“Once the impossible has been excluded then whatever remains however implausible must be the truth.”
“Once pseudo-scientific wishful thinking has been excluded whatever remains however contrary to that must be the truth.”
Whichever, it’s rotten logic. Argumentum ad ignorantiam, to be specific. One of Doyle’s greatest blunders, and the chief mode of argumentation used to sell CAGW. Detective Sherlock redeemed himself somewhat with this, which is very germane to that topic:
“”””” beng says:
December 7, 2010 at 6:45 am
Until we understand the physics (and the history) better, there’s no way anyone can say that limiting man-made chlorofluorocarbons has any effect on the ozone “hole”. Was there a “hole” there before we could observe such things? Nobody knows. “””””
Well Mother Gaia knows, and she says they’ve been there forever; and if you just monitored the apparent ground level color Temperature of the sun, you would know that.
MostlyHarmless says:
December 7, 2010 at 3:35 pm
You have a correct analysis. I am a physical organic chemist and I find this situation humorous, if it were not so disruptive and costly. It is one of the many non-problems for which we have found a brilliant non-solution. O3 mixes completely with nitrogen and oxygen in the air. So any “hole” has to be a temporary problem. The clue is that it does not move around but is situated at the pole as an unmixed gradient. It is because any local generation of ozone mixes more slowly at the cold temperature at the coldest pole, since partial pressure depends directly on temperature in accordance with Boyle’s Laws.
Here is a clue. Saturn has a standing wave at the south pole:
“The straight sides of the northern polar hexagon are each approximately 13,800 km (8,600 mi) long, making them larger than the diameter of the Earth. The entire structure rotates with a period of 10h 39 m 24s, the same period as that of the planet’s radio emissions, which is assumed to be equal to the period of rotation of Saturn’s interior. The hexagonal feature does not shift in longitude like the other clouds in the visible atmosphere.
The pattern’s origin is a matter of much speculation. Most astronomers seem to think it was caused by some standing-wave pattern in the atmosphere; but the hexagon might be a novel aurora. Polygonal shapes have been replicated in spinning buckets of fluid in a laboratory.”
OR Saturnians produce a lot of chlorofluorocarbons that produce the peculiar hexagonal “hole”.