Image Credits: NOAA – National Weather Service – Climate Prediction Center
By WUWT Regular “Just The Facts”
On the heels of Andrew Dessler’s Ozone Hole tweet, we have from the BBC:
“Researchers from the University of East Anglia have discovered evidence of four new gases that can destroy ozone and are getting into the atmosphere from as yet unidentified sources.”
“Scientists have identified four new man-made gases that are contributing to the depletion of the ozone layer.
Two of the gases are accumulating at a rate that is causing concern among researchers.”
“Other scientists acknowledged that while the current concentrations of these gases are small and they don’t present an immediate concern, work would have to be done to identify their origin.
“This paper highlights that ozone depletion is not yet yesterday’s story,” said Prof Piers Forster, from the University of Leeds.
“The concentrations found in this study are tiny. Nevertheless, this paper reminds us we need to be vigilant and continually monitor the atmosphere for even small amounts of these gases creeping up, either through accidental or unplanned emissions.
“Of the four species identified, CFC-113a seems the most worrying as there is a very small but growing emission source somewhere, maybe from agricultural insecticides. We should find it and take it out of production.”
The paper “Newly detected ozone-depleting substances in the atmosphere” Laube et al., paywalled, can be found here:
“Ozone-depleting substances emitted through human activities cause large-scale damage to the stratospheric ozone layer, and influence global climate. Consequently, the production of many of these substances has been phased out; prominent examples are the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), and their intermediate replacements, the hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs). So far, seven types of CFC and six types of HCFC have been shown to contribute to stratospheric ozone destruction1, 2. Here, we report the detection and quantification of a further three CFCs and one HCFC.”
“Our observations on air samples collected in remote regions of the atmosphere show the presence of four previously undetected ozone-depleting substances (ODSs). We have identified and quantified CFC-112 (CFCl2CFCl2), CFC-112a (CF2ClCCl3), CFC-113a (CF3CCl3) and HCFC-133a (CF3CH2Cl) in the atmosphere (Fig. 1). We have reconstructed their past abundances from air extracted from deep polar firn, which can provide a natural archive of atmospheric composition up to about a century back in time5. Our firn air measurements suggest that all four newly reported compounds are anthropogenic (see also Supplementary Information), with insignificant atmospheric abundances before the 1960s.”
For reference, the images the head of this article show the current Northern “Ozone Hole” within the Northern Polar Vortex, at 10 hPa/mb – Approximately 31,000 meters (101,700 feet). Draw your own conclusions…
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They were too embarrassed to admit that they didn’t adequately study swamp gas for fear of the Swamp Thang.
Are some patents running out, again?
we need to ban dihydrogen monoxide and start taxing anyone who uses it.
Here is the “send us more money” line.
They don’t know the sources, it’s a mystery, but it looks like man’s pesticides. What a load of utter bollocks.
There is no proof mana is not emanating in large quantities from unidentified sources into the stratosphere and there is no telling what harm it may do there. However, a regular mana tax, payed by everyone below a certain income level, should resolve the issue swiftly.
justthefactswuwt says:
March 9, 2014 at 6:56 pm
I am consistently amused by fear-mongering regarding various “holes”.
Bar question: “So where are you from?”
“A patch of fur about this big.”
Exactly.
Properly speaking, it is never been a “hole”. Ozone concentration has never been zero. “scientists” have been calling a “hole” when the amount of ozone is lower than certain amount of Dobson units. But the rest of the population, politicians included, have understood that the ozone “hole” is a complete lack of ozone in a portion of the stratosphere.
That is like saying that a 1 meter wide wall is a wall but if you find a thinner portion of the wall which is only 0.5 meters wide, then you call that portion a hole. That is not a hole, a hole is when there is no bricks at all.
Or when you have a sheet of paper with a watermark and you say that the watermark is a hole.
Quoting from nasa´s site ozonewatch: http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/
So, if the amount of ozone is 300 dobson units then it is a layer. but if the amount of ozone is 200 dobson units then it is a hole.
The term is totally misleading. And it is done so to scare people.
“Of the four species identified, CFC-113a seems the most worrying as there is a very small but growing emission source somewhere, maybe from agricultural insecticides. We should find it and take it out of production.”
Let’s hope it’s his ass then he can take himself “out of production”.
Uhh ooh. We had better reverse all industrialization immediately and go live in caves as hunter-gatherers.
Please do not give the University of East Anglia too much credit for being the producers of the worst science in the western world.
We would like you to also consider the University of NSW when voting on this category.
____________________
The only currency left for so much of what now is supposed to pass as a chimera called science is “Fear”.
[ chimera= a thing that is hoped or wished for but in fact is illusory or impossible to achieve ]
So much of what we see classified as science is now nothing more than another deliberately Fear inducing claim dressed up as some sort of claim to be science, a science that is specifically shaped to try and increase the levels of “Fear” amongst the public.
It is a very bad omen and a very sad day indeed for the future of Science when Science can seemingly no longer rely on it’s hard earned past integrity, it’s curiosity, it’s honesty with itself , the hard earned public respect garnered by the real scientists of the past and it’s long established desire and goals to try and answer the questions that confront mankind in every field.
Instead science has turned to a strategy of deliberately stimulating an emotion which is one of the most traumatic of all human emotions, that of “Fear”, to try and achieve it’s no longer humanity orientated goals but instead it’s new self aggrandizing and self indulgent goals of increasing it’s own power, influence and wealth regardless of the well being and at the expense of those whose taxes pay for that very so called “Science” .
Increasingly today’s Science is seen to be deliberately using and promoting and exploiting to the utmost one of the most basic of human emotions, that of “Fear” to try and increase it’s influence, it’s wealth and it’s political power.
In doing so it has sold it’s now sad and miserable shrunken soul for plate of an increasingly illusory and increasingly indigestible bowl of a contemptible porridge of dollar notes with no substance and of no perceivable benefit in the end but with a huge latent capacity to do almost untold damage and harm to both science and to mankind.
Holy cow, I’ve just discovered another source of Gullible Warming, it’s called Nonexistentium and I need $5m immediately to research it. Anyone?
These people always need a new scam on the boil. After initial stunning successes with DDT, CFCs , Y2K and Global Warming, the complete fiasco of Y2K, the persistence of the (so-called) Ozone Hole and the degradation of the Global Warming Scam by continued failures in forecasts, it was time to launch a new Scam. This time the money is in banning 4 new chemicals and diverting agriculture into new genetically engineered products without much doubt. The fact that it emanates from UEA somewhat blunts its message as that place is now seen widely as Scam-Central.
The DDT ban continues to impact on the health of millions of people without causing any real benefit. The impact of the CFC ban, Global Warming Alarmist Mania and restrictions continue to impact everyone’s lives negatively with no visible effect on the weather (climate). This new scam will have similar effects. These people are the visible surface of a vast world-wide criminal enterprise aimed at destroying human lives and welfare for private gain.
Meanwhile, the GCR has increased.
http://oi60.tinypic.com/m95dhl.jpg
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_z100_nh_f00.gif
Researchers from the University of Everything Alarming are alarmed?
This is really bad — we’re into reruns. And not very popular ones at th\at
Anne Ominous says: March 9, 2014 at 10:32 pm
Not really, and not really. That is: it’s not really interesting, because there’s not really a hole within a hole. It’s simply a gradient. It looks like discrete regions because of the intervals used to color it.
I know, it’s not really a “Hole” at all, hence the quotes, but it is really interesting, because it indicates that the likely cause is dynamical versus chemical processes.
Man oh man, we may have got into their emails too early. Imagine what a treasure trove of email malfeasance we would have had in the last several years. Of course now, since the UEA has banned emailing, we are going to be left in the dark on all this maneuvering. I can see the progression toward banning the UEA with this latest piece of junk.
justthefactswuwt says:
March 10, 2014 at 4:33 am
“but it is really interesting, because it indicates that the likely cause is dynamical versus chemical processes.”
Can I pitch you with the dynamical process of all the gases except O2 being diamagnetic and thereby being repelled by a magnetic field, whereas O2 is comparatively strongly magnetic. You may have seen me putting this forward on a few occasions. In one of your posts above you mention there is also a Methane hole, nitrogen oxide hole and I’ve shown there is a CO 2 hole as well. I’m predicting there is a noble gas hole as well. On this subject, has anyone measured WHAT IS IN the ozone hole? I would say it is enriched in oxygen. Not only does a mag field push the diamagnetic molecules away, it pulls in O2 which further assists in displacing the others. Your polar winds and downdrafts would not just blow the Ozone away (and methane, nitrogen oxides) it would blow them all away. I know it is a low but I’d like to see the quantification of all the hole. This is what happens when we chisel an assumption in stone. It is not science to just say WHAT IS NOT THERE! From my thread on the recent “Claim: Would have happened to…” these links:
Gary Pearse says:
March 8, 2014 at 5:16 pm
1) There is an observed CO2 hole at the poles
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=82142
and: Scripps measured the same thing since 1957 only they didn’t know what they had!!
http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/graphics_gallery/mauna_loa_and_south_pole/mauna_loa_and_south_pole.html lower CO2 at the south pole
2) The piece de resistance! Oxygen is attracted to the poles. This link is a very dramatic one with oxygen blasted out into outer space by the solar wind and is captured by the earth’s magnetic field and returns to earth at the poles!! “MAGE/HENA observes the oxygen ions, expelled from the Earth’s atmosphere by the solar wind, return to the polar regions via the magnetic field.”
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a002400/a002445/
Also, look at Nasa’s Antarctic O-hole. There is a collar of concentrated O3 around the O-hole which is up to over 440 dobson units – am I the only one to have noticed this? As in your N-Pole example, the ozone isn’t depleted it is pushed away like the roll neck of turtleneck sweater. Why not calculate the total volume of Ozone and see if all these features balance or there is a loss. Science and logic have to be put back into the picture. Here is the image from Nasa
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/ozone.php
Yeah, I think wind is a factor but mag is the fractionator.
Latest: UEA identify the four ozone threatening gases:
1. Itride-Lyinabowtit (I3LiBTT)
2. Silicon-thataint-gonawerk (SiO2TGWK)
3. Iso-noimrite (C5H8NIMRT)
4. Arsinetworeminegan (AsH3WA)
UEA:
Honest, we really are still relevant!
sarc
Time to DEFUND science and Universities.
Why should we pay for propaganda mills when our debt is sky rocketing?
KNR says:
>Researchers from the University of East Anglia – oxymoron?
It is interesting to see what pops out of UEA when they decide to go ‘sciencing’. From the analyses above it is pretty clear that there are natural sources of all 4 of these chemicals as well as clear evidence that they are neither new nor significant in concentration.
Further, it is abundantly clear that the decrease in ozone is caused by low-ozone air descending at both poles. That means the Montreal Protocol was pointless save as an exercise in creating unified action against a common threat. Perhaps it is time to give prominence to the common threat posed by shoddy, speculative Hollywood Science (HS). HS is the kind of brainless crap in movies like “The Day After Tomorrow” or the outstretched finger-grasping by the ‘hero’ at the end of his tether in “Gravity”.
Findings things we already know are there is hardly publication-worthy stuff. Calling something ‘new’ when it is listed in public documents shows ignorance.
Is anyone, anyone, surprised that alarmist Hollywood Science wrapped in speculative ignorance has, once again, emerged, peer-reviewed, from the University of East Anglia?
Let’s look at the cost comparison.
World wide increase the cost of refrigeration and now agricultural insecticides which we should find it and take it out of production.
Versus
Buy sunscreen and tell the under 5,000 residents / visitors to Antarctica to keep their shirts on in November (no sun anyway).
Hoser says:
March 9, 2014 at 10:32 pm
O3 is not at the top of the atmosphere. When the polar air goes into super deep-freeze mode, it drops like a rock taking likely all but the highest stratosphere with it. This circulation is what the polar cell does, I’m suggesting the flow goes into high gear in winter. Thus, would we not expect the O3 level to fall naturally every winter at the poles regardless of hypothetical CFC effects? What am I missing?
That the ozone level drops in spring and early summer, not winter! There is no UV there in winter so the photodissociative formation of the Cl atoms does not take place then, but starts to take place when the sunlight returns to the Antarctic stratosphere.