NASA Reveals New Results From Inside the Ozone Hole – Dec. 11, 2013
NASA scientists have revealed the inner workings of the ozone hole that forms annually over Antarctica and found that declining chlorine in the stratosphere has not yet caused a recovery of the ozone hole.
More than 20 years after the Montreal Protocol agreement limited human emissions of ozone-depleting substances, satellites have monitored the area of the annual ozone hole and watched it essentially stabilize, ceasing to grow substantially larger. However, two new studies show that signs of recovery are not yet present, and that temperature and winds are still driving any annual changes in ozone hole size.
“Ozone holes with smaller areas and a larger total amount of ozone are not necessarily evidence of recovery attributable to the expected chlorine decline,” said Susan Strahan of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “That assumption is like trying to understand what’s wrong with your car’s engine without lifting the hood.”
To find out what’s been happening under the ozone hole’s hood, Strahan and Natalya Kramarova, also of NASA Goddard, used satellite data to peer inside the hole. The research was presented Wednesday at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
Kramarova tackled the 2012 ozone hole, the second-smallest hole since the mid 1980s. To find out what caused the hole’s diminutive area, she turned to data from the NASA-NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite, and gained the first look inside the hole with the satellite’s Ozone Mapper and Profiler Suite’s Limb Profiler. Next, data were converted into a map that shows how the amount of ozone differed with altitude throughout the stratosphere in the center of the hole during the 2012 season, from September through November.
The map revealed that the 2012 ozone hole was more complex than previously thought. Increases of ozone at upper altitudes in early October, carried there by winds, occurred above the ozone destruction in the lower stratosphere.
“Our work shows that the classic metrics based on the total ozone values have limitations – they don’t tell us the whole story,” Kramarova said.
The classic metrics create the impression that the ozone hole has improved as a result of the Montreal protocol. In reality, meteorology was responsible for the increased ozone and resulting smaller hole, as ozone-depleting substances that year were still elevated. The study has been submitted to the journal of Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.
Separate research led by Strahan tackled the holes of 2006 and 2011 – two of the largest and deepest holes in the past decade. Despite their similar area, however, Strahan shows that they became that way for very different reasons.
Strahan used data from the NASA Aura satellite’s Microwave Limb Sounder to track the amount of nitrous oxide, a tracer gas inversely related to the amount of ozone depleting chlorine. The researchers were surprised to find that the holes of 2006 and 2011 contained different amounts of ozone-depleting chlorine. Given that fact, how could the two holes be equally severe?
The researchers next used a model to simulate the chemistry and winds of the atmosphere. Then they re-ran the simulation with the ozone-destroying reactions turned off to understand the role that the winds played in bringing ozone to the Antarctic. Results showed that in 2011, there was less ozone destruction than in 2006 because the winds transported less ozone to the Antarctic – so there was less ozone to lose. This was a meteorological, not chemical effect. In contrast, wind blew more ozone to the Antarctic in 2006 and thus there was more ozone destruction. The research has been submitted to the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
This work shows that the severity of the ozone hole as measured by the classic total column measurements does not reveal the significant year-to-year variations in the two factors that control ozone: the winds that bring ozone to the Antarctic and the chemical loss due to chlorine.
Until chlorine levels in the lower stratosphere decline below the early 1990s level – expected sometime after 2015 but likely by 2030 – temperature and winds will continue to dictate the variable area of the hole in any given year. Not until after the mid 2030s will the decline stratospheric chlorine be the primary factor in the decline of ozone hole area.
“We are still in the period where small changes in chlorine do not affect the area of the ozone hole, which is why it’s too soon to say the ozone hole is recovering,” Strahan said. “We’re going into a period of large variability and there will be bumps in the road before we can identify a clear recovery.”
Related Links
› NASA Goddard’s Ozone Hole Watch website
I am pleased to see “Hoax” and “ozone hole” used in the same sentence.
It looks like we are REALLY strarting to see some very significant changes in global ice particularly Antarctic and Global
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.antarctic.png
I am placing my bets that Arctic will return to, and go beyond average by Feb 2014
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.arctic.png
If the trend in Antarctic continues like this for another 2-3 years this will become a very serious issue and be the portent of a major ice age. Maybe its time world governments be advised of this worrying trend most likely linked to Solar actvity or natural cycles.
Owen in GA says:
December 11, 2013 at 8:06 pm
“As it stands now, an awful lot of preventable malaria cases occur that could have been stopped with a very targeted use of DDT.”
I’ve recently read about an African farmer complaining that he can’t sell his organic Sesame as organic to European organic food importers if he uses DDT indoors to protect his family.
Maybe the hidden goal of the European Greens is really to wipe out excess population. European Greens claim they have nothing against indoor usage of DDT for Malaria protection but at the same time do everything they can to stop its usage.
As I understand it, & I am only a humble Chartered Structural Engineer, the hole is nothing of the kind, that it is actually merely a “thinning”, & that there are several of them but the “lesser spotted variety” don’t get a look in! Also as several of you guys have mentioned none of the “holers” have answered the basic question, & I repeat ad nauseum, how do they know that it has not always been there? The answer is that they simply don’t know, we are applying the fabled “Precautionary Principle”!
What is coming through loud and clear right across the blog world is the destruction of the century old respect for science as modern science’s ‘blatant corruption which is being created by the desire of opportunists in science to both gather fame and recognition to themselves as well as wealth and influence and power to their own persons and the small and usually quite incestuous scientist insider groups they are a part of and hang out with.
The corruption of basic science is mostly limited to a few specialized science disciplines so far. Science disciplines such as climate science being by far the worst, although the social sciences such as psychology with it’s Lewendownskys is closer to quackery even than even much of climate science and thats not saying much for the integrity of climate science and it’s practitioners.
The increasing disillusionment with science by a very considerable and increasing section of science layman followers is becoming like water on a stone. It doesn’t seem to be having any effect but over time that water will wear away and destroy that hard stone.
So it is with the reputation and respect for science and not just the most corrupt disciplines in science but the cynicism about scientists and their, increasingly obvious [ thanks to the internet,] ulterior and in some cases apparent nefarious motives that has become a highly visible characteristic of much of some specific disciplines in science today is destroying the image and respect for all of science as well as for scientists of all persuasions.
This reduction in respect and in some examples an outright contempt for some science disciplines and the scientists in those disciplines is now filtering down from the interested science aficionado’s to the tax paying public.
And the politicals will follow as the opinions amongst the public harden as more and more totally bogus and outright lies by scientists on some supposed future catastrophic event are shown for what they are, just a beat up by some third rate self opinionated little upstart who has got himself / herself a few letters after their name, called themselves scientists and now believe they are of a status and a level of superior intelligence that gives them the rights to instruct everybody else on what dictates they are to follow,
The public are increasingly awake to those self promoting opportunists who are now starting to create some serious credibility problems right across science of all disciplines
That increasing contempt for much, [ not all as some scientists are deeply respected and most definitely should be held in deep respect ] of today’s science can be very clearly seen in all the posts above and right back through the posts of numerous other science based blogs regardless of which side of a scientific fence the commenter is seated.
On the so called Ozone hole which is not a hole but a reduced region of stratospheric ozone which despite the hoo haa about UV effects is the equivalent of the changes in the amount of UV an American would get in NY compared to a the amount of UV they would get in say Florida or a bit further north of there.
There is a comment way back in time somewhere from a source I can no longer recall, [ a lousy recommendation I know, ] that the Japanese prior to WW2 knew from their radio propagation work in the South Pacific as they prepared for a future naval war in the Pacific, that there was something unusual occurring at high atmospheric levels [ HF radio propagation ] over the almost completely unexplored Antarctic continent of those times.
The Japanese unlike the Germans who kept a lot of their records intact right through to the surrender, destroyed a great deal of their research and documentation to try and minimise any war crime trials and to deny the victors any grounds on which the highest levels of the Japanese military could be made accountable for and so this information if it existed was quite likely destroyed towards the end of WW2.
As to the corruption in the science surrounding the Ozone Hole affair , perhaps Proff James Lovelock of Gaia fame and also the inventor of an instrument to measure ozone levels from the ground so is well qualified to comment on the Ozone Hole science should have a final say.
This interview was with The Guardian;
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/mar/29/james-lovelock
James Lovelock on the value of sceptics and why Copenhagen was doomed
[ quoted ]
Lovelock’s reaction to first reading about the stolen CRU emails [he later clarified that he hadn’t read the originals, saying: “Oddly, I felt reluctant to pry”:
[ Lovelock ]
I was utterly disgusted. My second thought was that it was inevitable. It was bound to happen. Science, not so very long ago, pre-1960s, was largely vocational. Back when I was young, I didn’t want to do anything else other than be a scientist. They’re not like that nowadays. They don’t give a damn. They go to these massive, mass-produced universities and churn them out. They say: “Science is a good career. You can get a job for life doing government work.” That’s no way to do science.
I have seen this happen before, of course. We should have been warned by the CFC/ozone affair because the corruption of science in that was so bad that something like 80% of the measurements being made during that time were either faked, or incompetently done.
Fudging the data in any way whatsoever is quite literally a sin against the holy ghost of science. I’m not religious, but I put it that way because I feel so strongly. It’s the one thing you do not ever do. You’ve got to have standards.
[ end of quote ]
So the ozone hole “crisis” wasn’t. The claims of a dangerous ozone hole were false. The policies to deal with it were a waste of billions of dollars. Hmmmm….that sounds like something else the environmentalists are doing to us. What can that be?
The crucial point is not whether DuPont’s patent for Freon had expired but whether the gas for which they certainly had a living patent could have its cheaper and more effective rival eliminated by political fiat. It required only some convenient scare to come along.
On DDT and the enviro loons role in forcing not only DDT off the market but also for their role on preventing the life saving Golden Rice from being released since it’s development in 2000.
All because it was a GMO using genes from corn, one of the world’s largest crops as well as from a very common soil, bacteria to create Beta Carotene which the body uses in Vitamin A production which itself is an essential in the retaining the vitality of the human immune system.
The consequences of preventing the release of Golden Rice are that around 10 million mostly little kids die each year from preventable diseases in the Asian rice eating regions.
With the UN’s estimate of 40 to 50 million preventable deaths from malaria since the banning of DDT, a ban now ignored as numerous countries have given the finger to the western elitist greenpeaces of this world, plus another 30 million preventable deaths due to the all out political campaign by the enviro killers against the release of Golden Rice has arguably caused as many as 70 to 100 million preventable deaths amongst the most vulnerable on this earth over the last 40 years.
Add to this the tens of thousands of the poor and elderly in Europe who are dying each recent harsh winter from the effects of cold due to them no longer able to both eat and heat. Due again to the cost of renewable energy and the all out drive by the enviro-loons to force western civilisation off of reliable fossil fueled energy onto the totally useless, grossly inefficient and unreliable and increasingly unaffordable renewable wind and solar energy and with NO perceivable reduction in CO2 or effects on the climate.
Greenpeace, the WWF and all their other leech like enviro NGO’s are arguable the greatest mass destroyers of human life this planet has ever seen.
And they couldn’t give a damn!
For the DDT story
The Killer Elite ; http://capitalresearch.org/pubs/pdf/OT0705.pdf
For the Golden Rice project ; http://www.goldenrice.org/
The ozone ‘hole’ was a scientific horror to many people, from the moment it was discovered by satellites. They didn’t give a crap that it’s a natural and persistent annual phenomenon. They didn’t give a damn that they had zero understanding of it’s mechanisms. The sky was falling, and they weren’t about to waste an opportunity to declare a crisis, and then to proscribe equally imaginary mitigations.
“In 1995, the year Molina and Rowland were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their discovery of the CFC-ozone depletion link” from
The Skeptics vs. the Ozone Hole
By Jeffrey Masters, Ph.D. — Director of Meteorology, Weather Underground, Inc.
Why should they not return them along with Al Gore.
Mickey Reno says:
December 12, 2013 at 4:49 am
The ozone ‘hole’ was a scientific horror to many people, from the moment it was discovered by satellites.
=========
It was not discovered by satellites. It was discovered by a man named Dobson in 1956 with an instrument made by him. That is why it is measured in Dobson units.
I promised myself I would give preaching my alternate to CFCs as ozone hole creaters as it doesn’t seem to even get read. Anyway here goes: the only gas in the atmosphere that is magnetic is O2 (strongly paramagnetic) – it is attracted to the poles. ALL OTHER GASES ARE DIAMAGNETIC – REPULSED BY A MAGNETIC FIELD. If I am correct that this explains the ozone hole, then there should also be an N2 hole, CO2 hole and a Noble Elements hole at the poles (north pole is confounded by busier outside weather incursions). As a corollary, we should find the atmosphere at the equator somewhat impoverished in O2 and enriched in all the others. Probably biological activity confounds this simple picture but we could use noble gases as a tracer and some atmospheric analysis of the ozone hole to see if it is richer in O2 and impoverished in all other gases, of course including ozone. Any physicists out their to comment? Perhaps they could even calculate the effect. Another test is to see if the ozone hole fluctuates with the earth’s magnetic field strength. Also, I believe ozone has been separated from O2 using magnetics.
Chris @NJSnowFan says:
December 11, 2013 at 3:39 pm
——————–
The article states that chlorine levels in the atmosphere are falling.
With regard to the “Ozone Hole” and CFCs (as well as other refrigerants), it seems that there is a money trail similar to CAGW. The fact that almost all of the replacement refrigerants are terribly flammable, poisonous, inefficient, or all three just makes the situation worse. The automakers here in Europe have been going round and round with France and the European Union because the latest proposed refrigerant can create (or result in) hydrogen fluoride in an accident where fire is involved. Rescue workers would have to don Hazmat equipment before approaching the wreck(age).
Ironically, CO2 is being proposed as a replacement, although there are some technical hurdles left to resolve before a solution can hit the market. It’s being described as a safe alternative, which contradicts the suggestion that CO2 is a pollutant.
Somehow I think that in cases like these, the solution is worse than the problem.
For an interesting look at refrigeration technology, and rapid Barbecue ignition
(see the Dave Barry column) have a look at George Gobel here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_H._Goble…he’s done a lot of interesting research.
el gordo says:
December 11, 2013 at 3:35 pm
There was a multinational that did very well out of this scam, but its name eludes me.
as others mentioned..Dow..
and it was Enrons first go I believe at a wonderful moneyscam on credits etc.
and ken lays methods for taxing or charging was then later used for the carbon scam..
or so I have gathered. correct me if I’m wrong:-)
At AGU, NASA says CFC reduction is not shrinking the ozone hole – yet
==============
The ozone must be hiding in the deep oceans along with the warming.
The reality is that scientists need to get out of the lab more often and have a look around. We see a polar vortex on other planets and it has nothing to do with man made CFC or chlorine.
What you are seeing is water going down the drain. Cold air is sinking a the poles, combined with the rotation of the planet sets up a vortex that scrubs the atmosphere at the poles. You end up with a “hole” at the poles, depending on the temperature gradient, with a collar of increased concentrations surrounding the hole.
https://www.google.ca/search?q=polar+vortex+venus+images
https://www.google.ca/search?q=polar+vortex+saturn+images
https://www.google.ca/search?q=polar+vortex+jupiter+images
https://www.google.ca/search?q=polar+vortex+titan+images
https://www.google.ca/search?q=polar+vortex+earth+images
Where did all the ozone go? these pictures tell the tale:
http://www.jhu.edu/~dwaugh1/gallery/ozone_rdf.jpg
http://www.jhu.edu/~dwaugh1/gallery/crista-anim.gif
The hole is not a result of ozone being destroyed. It is a result of ozone being transported from the poles to lower latitudes.
Warmies and the media like to post images of (ozone) holes, but the bottom line is if & how much UV levels have changed at the surface underneath. Why have we not seen this? If surface UV levels haven’t changed significantly, then all the handhole-wringing is useless.
I thought I had read (I think here at WUWT) that an analysis of isotopes in the ice record revealed that the ozone hole long preceded satellite observations of the phenomena. That the ozone hole must have existed long before human use of CFCs.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006AGUFM.U32A..05M
Bill_W says:
December 11, 2013 at 4:30 pm
I have my doubts about the DDT story as well, but pelicans have definitely come back in LA and I think elsewhere. Has anyone seen explanations of this that do not involve DDT? I have not looked into the papers that linked DDT to weak shells, but have been meaning to.
Maybe a change in their food supply also.
“The Pacific Sardine stocks began to disappear in the late 1940s due to
the compounding impacts of natural oceanographic cycles and fishing pressures.
Fossil evidence going back 1,700 years suggests that Pacific Sardine abundance
naturally fluctuates over time. These cycles average about 60 years, with a
period of recovery lasting on average 30 years. The most recent period of
abundance began in the late 1970s.”
http://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/education/voicesofthebay/pdfs/oceanpowerpointnotes.pdf
With news about the PDO shift leading to less sardines, check back on pelican numbers in a few years.
I’ve pointed this out before – and maybe others have too – ozone is an unstable substance with a half life dependent on the temperature: at -30 degrees C the half life is 3 months. And there’s your ozone hole. Always has been there always will be there CFCs or no CFCs.
Has anyone ever tracked the size of the ozone hole against ENSO? Might be interesting.
Sebastian Inlet, near Vero Beach FL.
So CO2, CFCs, and DDT are all controlled by conspiracy plots? I’m not sure skeptics will ever be more than a fringe opinion with this line of thinking.
DD More: I think the LA that Bill_W was referring to is the US State of Louisiana. I am not sure the Pacific sardine would have had much impact on Gulf of Mexico feeding birds – though I leave open the fact that I can be – and have been in the past – very wrong. The waters of Louisiana were very polluted prior to the clean water act, which did almost all of its good in the first 5 years of its existence and has since turned into a bureaucracy job creation bill and economy killing regulation machine. DDT probably had very little to do with Louisiana wildlife problems as it was just one of thousands of chemicals available to wreak havoc due to very little controls placed on the Louisiana petrochemical refining industries’ waste streams prior to the 1970s.