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
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.