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/
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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
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