My morning double take: "Arctic on the verge of record ozone loss"

Jon says:
March 15, 2011 at 2:41 pm
2003 was the 2nd Solar Max of Cycle 23 (it had an earlier Max in 2001).
When the Deep Solar Minimum hit, the UV output of the Sun slacked off in favor of longer bands of light. So, no mystery as to why there should be a big hole in the Arctic ozone.
The Sun is responsible.
We didn’t do it.

memoryvault says:
March 15, 2011 at 5:14 pm
JPA Knowles
119 comments (so far) on “holes” that don’t exist, in a “layer” that doesn’t exist, and a mountain of quotes from and links to “published, peer-reviewed scientific papers”, all debating the “causes” of a purely natural phenomenon that occurs over the Poles every (local) winter because the sun doesn’t shine at the time – hence no formation of ozone.
It really IS that simple.
=======
from the post
“Our measurements show that at the relevant altitudes about half of the ozone that was present above the Arctic has been destroyed over the past weeks,” says AWI researcher Markus Rex, describing the current situation. “Since the conditions leading to this unusually rapid ozone depletion continue to prevail, we expect further depletion to occur.”
Can anyone point to a single satellite image from the past few weeks that supports 50% depletion at “relevant altitudes”? I can buy into the recent sun spot / auroras over the Arctic as a trigger but where is the proof?

[Snip. We don’t appreciate being called “deniers” here. ~dbs, mod.]

memoryvault – beat me to it.
There isn’t any hole, just a region where O3 concentrations are almost nearly zero instead of just almost zero. The concentration dropped over the last few weeks? You mean like EVERY year during that time period? When the arctic is in almost 24 hour darkness and so there’s very little UV busting up O2 and sticking it back together as O3? So this year is more than usual? Yeah? By how much? I didn’t see how much MORE than usual, they just lumped the increment together with the natural variation and screamed about the total. So how much more? 1%? 5%? How much and why didn’t they say?
And…oh no! Some of that arctic air with almost no ozone instead of almost nearly no ozone his headed south, over the temperate zones…OHMIGOD! Its looming over us as it comes south…hmmm…came out of the arctic shadow into sunshine and PING ozone left right and centre and up and down. Not to mention us poor souls who live in the supposed at risk north temperate zones have cottoned onto something that the clown fish pseudo PNS ChickenWarmingLittle dweebs seem to have missed. The sunshine comes in at an ANGLE. From the SOUTH. YOU MORONS! Even in mid summer (you know, long after the ozone pretend hole has long since recovered from spring sunshine?) the sun at high noon STILL has a soutward slant. Not only does it have to got through the air mass SOUTH of us where the Ozone is…what the heck is the opposite of a hole that isn’t a hole just a lower concentration of almost zero? …where the Ozone is inflated? engorged? mountainized? humped? what ever some sort of maximum anyway…so it has to come through the MAXIMUM concentration of Ozone and…oh yeah GEOMETRY WORKS! At the equator the sunshine would got almost straight down, but in the north temperate zone it is going through the atmosphere at an angle (FROM THE SOUTH!) so it has to travel through MORE Ozone than if it was going straight down at the equator and the angle takes it UNDER the almost nearly not there not a hole just a low concentration gets destroyed and rebuilt every year thingamjig.
Not to mention that when cold air from the arctic moves south where it gets pretty much instantly Ozonized, did they perhaps wonder why a vacuum hole doesn’t get left behind? No, I’m kidding, there is no VACUUM HOLE forming in the arctic! Air from..you know…SOUTH of the arctic where there’s a mountain that isn’t a mountain just a higher concentration of ozone moves North to replace it.
I can go on ranting for about five more pages on this good GRIEF! there are so many holes in this story that the only holes in the story to be concerned about are the ones in the researcher’s…hey! THAT’S where the vacuum is! What keeps their heads from imploding? Oh…its not really a vacuum or a hole its just a region of almost nearly zero grey matter.

davidmhoffer says:
March 15, 2011 at 5:49 pm
==============================
rotfl
Thank you David, you saved me a blood pressure pill………
excellent rant btw

George E. Smith says:
March 15, 2011 at 2:59 pm “We have pretty good evidence, that any and every single molecule of H2O that is added to the earth’s atmosphere, anywhere on earth, at any altitude must result in a reduction of the amount of solar spectrum energy that reaches the earth surface to get stored in either the deep oceans, or the rocks or urban heat islands, or even in the interstices of snow covered ice. that in the long run shoulkd lead to a cooler earth.”
George: You have presented no evidence for this claim. You have no evidence for this claim. The claim is patently false. H2O in vapor form is a major greenhouse gas as even the most adamant skeptics admit; indeed they even use this to falsely argue the CO2 level does not matter. H2O in clouds is either liquid droplets or ice crystals. Clouds may have a cooling effect or net warming effect depending on several factors.
See: here.
~dbs: Apologies. Hope this is better.

Mike says:
March 15, 2011 at 5:46 pm
[Snip. We don’t appreciate being called “deniers” here. ~dbs, mod.]
Don’t cuss the data. Refute the cooler troposphere.

@Smokey.
No one denies the existence of significant natural climate variability or of uncertainties in climate science. But the human caused temperature increase has now risen above the natural noise level as scientists expected. The is no basis to even suspect we can double or triple the CO2 level as we are on track to do this century and not profoundly impact our climate and oceans.

@Tim Clark,
That’s only part of the troposphere. From the graph it looks like there is a lot of variability and the the red curve has been above the mean at times and is below the mean now. So what? You seem to be responding to something James C said. Perhaps he will get back to you.

Reed Coray
When you find the address for getting grants, please let me know. I’m chasing funding for my pet theory too.
As everyone knows, there is something called the “carbon cycle”. Plants absorb CO2 from the air and turn into more plant. The plants die and release the CO2 back into the atmosphere, or the plant gets eaten by something which, in turn releases the CO2 back into the atmosphere. Then it gets absorbed by plants and the whole cycle starts again.
However, when the coal beds of the earth were formed, a lot of this CO2 was taken out of the cycle by plants being submerged under water before they decomposed. This upset the “balance of nature” by vastly reducing the amount of carbon available for the cycle and locking it up as coal.
My theory is that Mother Nature / Gaia / God / Aliens or whatever then evolved humans expressly to discover coal, dig it out of the ground and burn it, as a means of restoring the balance in the carbon cycle.
I call this the “George Carlin Theory of Planned Evolution”. (sarc)

I like this web site. Brings a lot of data to the table.
from http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/Ozone.htm
* “For the “coldest” Arctic winters, the volume of air with temperatures low enough to support polar stratospheric clouds (called “VPSC”) has increased significantly since the late 1960s. This change is much larger than expected from the direct radiative effect of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. The reason for the change is not clear, and it could be due to long-term natural variability or an unknown dynamical mechanism.”

AusieDan – asks for it simple.
There is element called Oxygen, its symbol is “O”.
Like many humans, “O” doesn’t like being alone and usually finds a mate. They pair up in a reasonably stable, monogamous relationship. A bit like a human marriage. This is also called “Oxygen” and its symbol is “O2”.
Now, as happens in human relationships, sometimes the O2’s get a bit too excited. When this happens they split up and reform as a threesome – what the French call a ménage a trois, but the rest of us call “Ozone”. The symbol for Ozone is O3.
As in human relationships, the Ozone threesome is highly unstable, and very quickly dissipates its extra energy and breaks down and reforms as O2.
“O”, as “O2” is mostly created by plants on the earth’s surface. Being slightly less heavy than Nitrogen the O2 couple rise up in the atmosphere. Up and up they go until they sometimes get hit by a little ray of sunshine coming the other way. That’s what gets them excited and causes them to split up and form a ménage a trois as Ozone. You might say sunlight is the equivalent of porn for O2 couples.
Anyway, this process has gone on for as long as O2 couples have been getting together, rising up, and sometimes getting hit by sunlight coming the other way. And it will continue for as long as there is O2 and sunlight.
Now, there are some places where the sun don’t shine, and I’m not talking about where the climate alarmists seem to have their heads stuck most of the time. I mean in the Arctic Circle during the NH winter, and the Antarctic Circle during the SH winter.
No sunlight = no Ozone. Simple as that.
Unfortunately over the last forty years there are some people who have made a lot of money out of pretending that what is written above is not the case, and that instead Ozone is a magical mystical layer at the very edge of the atmosphere, that has been there since the beginning of time and has only recently become threatened by terrible man/bear/pig and his nefarious activities.
I understand some version of this “man/bear/pig threat to the fragile ozone layer” what is now taught as “science” in our schools and universities.
The article we are commenting on here is just one such example of attributing Ozone “depletion” to some activity of man/bear/pig for profit.
Not sure I can make it simpler than that.