From the University of Leeds
We are already reaping the rewards of the Montreal Protocol, with the ozone layer in much better shape than it would have been without the UN treaty, according to a new study in Nature Communications.
Study lead author Professor Martyn Chipperfield, from the School of Earth & Environment at the University of Leeds, said: “Our research confirms the importance of the Montreal Protocol and shows that we have already had real benefits. We knew that it would save us from large ozone loss ‘in the future’, but in fact we are already past the point when things would have become noticeably worse.”
Although the Montreal Protocol came into force in 1987 and restricted the use of ozone-depleting substances, atmospheric concentrations of these harmful substances continued to rise as they can survive in the atmosphere for many years. Concentrations peaked in 1993 and have subsequently declined.
In the new study, the researchers used a state-of-the-art 3D computer model of atmospheric chemistry to investigate what would have happened to the ozone layer if the Montreal Protocol had not been implemented.
Professor Chipperfield said: “Ozone depletion in the polar regions depends on meteorology, especially the occurrence of cold temperatures at about 20km altitude – colder temperatures cause more loss. Other studies which have assessed the importance of the Montreal Protocol have used models to predict atmospheric winds and temperatures and have looked a few decades into the future. The predictions of winds and temperatures in these models are uncertain, and probably underestimate the extent of cold winters.
“We have used actual observed meteorological conditions for the past few decades. This gives a more accurate simulation of the conditions for polar ozone loss.”
The researchers suggest that the hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic would have grown in size by an additional 40% by 2013. Their model also suggests that had ozone-depleting substances continued to increase, the ozone layer would have become significantly thinner over other parts of the globe.
Professor Chipperfield said he undertook this study because of the exceptionally cold Arctic winter of 2010/11.
“We could see that previous models used to predict the impact of the Montreal Protocol in the future would not have predicted such extreme events and we wondered how much worse things could have been if the Montreal Protocol had not been in place,” he said.
Without the Montreal Protocol, the new study reveals that a very large ozone hole over the Arctic would have occurred during that cold winter and smaller Arctic ozone holes would have become a regular occurrence.
The Montreal Protocol has been strengthened over time through amendments and adjustments, supported by ongoing research. The researchers behind the new study say that scientists must continue to monitor the situation to ensure all potential threats to the ozone layer are mitigated.
###
Further information
The research was partially funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) through its National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) and the National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO).
The research paper, ‘Quantifying the Ozone and UV Benefits Already Achieved by the Montreal Protocol’, is published in the journal Nature Communications on 26 May 2015: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms8233
Models alone?
So ozone is probably another scam….
Basically the paper is saying that since the Montreal Protocol there has been no reduction in ozone levels, but the protocol still worked because without the protocol the ozone levels would have been higher. Funny that at the time they said the protocol would in due course remove the ozone hole. It seems that the thing over the Antarctic isn’t an ozone hole, it’s a credibility hole.
You got it backwards. No Montreal == less ozone, according to the models, of course.
Complete crock, but still…
Mark
Right. Just like when Nancy Pelosi announced that she’d created or *saved* millions of jobs after flushing hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into the economy with no discernible effect on the unemployment rate.
Or even more apropos, the old joke where a guy finds his friend standing on a corner snapping his fingers. When asked why he was doing that, the friend replied that he was keeping elephants away. When told there weren’t any elephants within hundreds of miles, the friend replied “Yeah, it works well, huh?”
Right on target, Mr. Jonas.
Larry,
I heard another version of that – probably whilst still at school, so in the Sixties.
then it was a man sitting in the train from Tattenham Corner, ripping the ‘Daily Telegraph’ into six inch squares.
‘Dashed effective, ain’t it!’
Auto
@Mike,
No, observations have measured a decline in ozone-depleting substances in the atmosphere. From the paper:
“The Montreal Protocol came into force in 1987 . . . . Concentrations peaked in 1993 and have subsequently declined.”
The Ozone Hole regularly opens, then closes as the Atmosphere gets exposed to the Sun..
Overall that’s what was learned in the 80’s and 90’s… how much .. if at all Humans impacted it… we can’t be sure.. the big shocker to begin with WAS the Ozone Hole itself..
… which of course had *never* existed before they had the wherewithal to discover it.
To quote Josh (in reverse as it were!) “AIn’t science wonderful?”
the ozone hole is caused by cold aid descending and scrubbing out the poles.
the largest antarctic ozone hole occurred in 2006
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/ozone.php
So is it the reduction in CFC’s that have increased Ozone levels in the Arctic or is it the increased temperatures that have increased Ozone in the Arctic?
Yes. Good thing the aerosols have been way contained by then because the hole would have been larger.
The Ozone “hole” has been observed since the late 1950’s and talked about in the 1920’s, by G. M. B. Dobson.
But how do we know if the ozone hole hasn’t always existed its just that prior to the 1950’s we didn’t have the equipment to measure it?
That was the question I asked Cambridge University and the Max Planck institute a few years ago. They cant be certain but think it unlikely due to modelling results
tonyb
[blockquote]
climatereason
May 27, 2015 at 1:04 am
But how do we know if the ozone hole hasn’t always existed its just that prior to the 1950’s we didn’t have the equipment to measure it?
That was the question I asked Cambridge University and the Max Planck institute a few years ago. They cant be certain but think it unlikely due to modelling results
tonyb
[/blockquote]
Oh, that is easy, tony, Just look at where the ethnicies with the darkest skin color live. They all are native to the southern hemisphere. (south Africa, Australia… ) The color of the skin is due to the presence of melatonin, a pigment produced by skin cells to protect us from UVB radiation damage.
The fact that these ethnicies had so much melanin in their skin proves that the southern hemisphere has always received more UV radiation than the northern one, because it has less stratrospheric ozone that blocks UV radiation. And it always has been like this.
Uh, sorry about the failed blockquote, and I meant to say melanin, not melatonin.
Use angle brackets, not square brackets.
Here is an interesting NASA publication from 2000. could it be the lack of solar activity which restored the ozone layer?
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ProtonOzone/
Anyway I know from experience that chillers work much longer on freon 22. The higher condenser pressures that the replacement refrigerants run are “built in” failure, especially in dehumidifier units!
Well I think it is fairly certain that ozone holes or thinning ozone has always existed, long before anybody thought to try and measure it.
Ever since folks started measuring the ground level spectrum of the sun, it has been known that the apparent color temperature of solar radiation had seasonal variations, and also changes over longer random periods of time. It was postulated that this was likely a result of seasonal changes in the short wavelength end of the solar spectrum. Obviously it wasn’t the sun doing it, even though solar UV does fluctuate, but ozone doesn’t just absorb in the UV, but also at visible wavelengths that will certainly alter the sun’s apparent color temperature.
Air force researchers reported on these seasonal changes in color temperature. It’s mentioned her in one of my Optics Handbooks, talking about “natural” light sources.
But they weren’t called ozone holes until somebody called them that.
Ozone level were reduced as a result of the two major stratospheric eruptions towards the end of the last century. This is recognised by mainstream.
Ozone has pretty much been flat-lining since 1996. This has very little to do with UN treaties and more to do with the lack of any major volcanoes.
This is also strong link between lower stratospheric temps and ozone.
All this was discussed at the end of this rather lengthy article on Climate Etc.
http://judithcurry.com/2015/02/06/on-determination-of-tropical-feedbacks/
A new paper out this week also looks at that stratosphere “pause” that matches the surface pause.
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v5/n6/full/nclimate2624.html
The similarity of the two can be seen here:
A scam in that CFC’s do not cause breakdown. It has been discovered that Ozone is formed by the action of UV, high energy, EM radiation. It is also that same radiation thaty can reduce the ozone to oxygen.
Antarctic Ozone concentration (at least) is affected by Bromine and Chlorine compounds from the oceans. Obviously they dominate the tiny human emissions. GCR’s are an important contributor to the effect.
A lack of Antarctic ozone causes additional cooling into space – a large heat vent, in other words. The Montreal Protocol is intended to block that vent. OK…if you must.
Not many facts here just “better than we expected” NASA reports Ozone is created by sunlight incident on 3O2 to form 2O3. after 30 minutes it decays back to 3O2… the ozone hole always covered where the sun doesn’t shine!
The Montreal Protocol had everything to do with Dupont’s patent on CFC’s expiring. The “Ozone Hole” was science invented to maximize corporate revenues and minimize competition.
If my memory serves, the ozone depletion scam was the first model driven catastrophe. It was taken at face value because “scientists using state of the art computers” said it was so. Why it manifested itself primarily at the Austral pole was never explained, even though the bulk of CFC loss to atmosphere was Boreal. Neither was it explained how very dense CFC gasses climbed high into the atmosphere.
The ozone “hole” is however adequately explained by considering the power of the solar system, the sun, combined with the Earth’s magnetic field. Each pole is the target of charged particles of differing charge, and these particles have different reactivity. Plus, light particles are most probably in higher concentration than more massive ones at the poles (derived from f=ma).
So the computer models can be challenged but there is money to be stolen from the people, so why do it?
Do we have to explain molecular diffusion to you? Gases are miscible. Molecular weight does not prevent this. Molecular weight gives you the diffusion velocity at a given temperature and pressure. So, the ‘heavy’ vapor is a gas and diffuses through to fill the whole container, which it does at the speed of sound and you can add turbulent bulk flow in, too, to boost it up, such as in a thunderstorm (which, I suspect, could create some interesting chemicals from the heat, light and charged entities on the non-water parts of the aerosol called a thundercloud). In this case, the whole container is the atmosphere. The higher molecular weight gases thus do not undergo gravitational fractionation until you reach the very top, where the lighter ones ‘preferentially’ escape because for these a higher fraction can reach escape velocity locally against the very low pressure.
Hmmm… exceptionally cold Arctic winter of 2010/11 why didn’t I read about that in the newspaper?
Glad that the ozone hole is healing up nicely.
I never realised Leeds had a university, never mind a professor called Chipperfield. I wonder if he’s any relation to those circus folk entertainers. Anyway, thanks to all their efforts and of course the precautionary principle, the sky hasn’t fallen on us, or perhaps it has, but we’ve been luck enough to be under one of the ozone holes everyone used to be having nervous breakdowns about.
Pointman
Actually, the University f Leeds is a well-established “red brick” university with a world class School of Earth Sciences.
And models all the way down.
So the bright blue hole never existed except as a glint in somebody’s eye.
So that was the ozone as measured on the 26th of March 2011, or was that the day they ran the models, or was that the day they invented the Montreal protocol ??
It’s a very uninformative diagram for a supposedly peer reviewed scientific paper.
Are red bricks somehow conducive to higher learning.
Don’t think we had red bricks at my University; well we had 60 inactive volcanos instead. Come to think of it, the scoria from the one of those that they dug up and carted away, was red.
Maybe that’s how I got my learning.
I’m sure that Uof Leeds is an excellent school. Are they also world class at computer modeling, like Peter Humbug is ??
“world class”?
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2014-15/subject-ranking/subject/physical-sciences/order/rank|asc
It had a world class University bar back in the 80’s, I remember that much. Well, when I say “remember” whilst talking about bars….
And famous as the venue for recording of The Who Live At Leeds
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_at_Leeds
I wouldn’t parade my ignorance in public. Leeds is a very good university, well over 100 years old.
Leeds might once have been a good university, at least by Brit standards. Doesn’t appear to be the case nowadyas.
There’s a restaurant in Fort Wayne IN called Coney Island that has been open for 100 years. The prices are average, the food is average at best, and the location is a hole in the wall downtown where few but those living there go anymore.
But hey, everybody in town has at least heard of it, and most have been there at least once. It’s a local classic. ^¿^
Ever hear of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien? Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Leeds and was on the staff of the Oxford English Dictionary, I believe.
Science by counterfactuals, what’s not to love? 6 million jobs created or saved. and all of them apparently in environmental science.
You beat me to it!
It always was to the detriment of asthma suffers who can no longer get good inhalers that will consistently deliver the correct dose of medicine each and every time.
Us asthma suffers don’t count unless we can be use as an excuse for something. like Obama CO2 increase asthma, A bold face lie, yet never called for it!
Asthma sufferers are big CO2 polluters. Regulations on wheezing to follow!
Those of us that have a degree in Environmental Science generally respect the complexity of our environment and realize that humans are an egocentric bunch.
+ 1000
Max, but for your having a doughnut and coffee this morning, the Earth would have fallen off of its axis. You saved the world. Good job, as usual. (God you’re awesome.)
So long as it was gluten-free and contained kale and chia seeds, mind you. Without those, we would have been doomed! Doomed I tell you!
….more hair spray
“the researchers used a state-of-the-art 3D computer model”
Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/20/daleo-on-ozone-hole-it-is-very-likely-to-have-been-there-forever/
Anto — haha, like it! — Eugene WR Gallun
Yeah, your post perfectly illustrates how those who reject global warming also tend to reject the very concept of science.
Without the Montreal Protocol, the new study reveals that a very large ozone hole over the Arctic would have occurred during that cold winter and smaller Arctic ozone holes would have become a regular occurrence.
MY REPLY -PROVE IT!
I thought all this ozone hole nonsense had long since been thoroughly resolved as natural and unrelated to DuPont’s expiring patent on freon. Unlike the Montreal Protocol.
I was wondering how far down the thread would DuPont show up…
Me too!
Not just DuPont, what was then ICI, Hoechst and Asahi were in on the act also. India and China were gearing up due to patent run out and much expected drop in price due to increased supply.
111 Trichloroethane was banned also and replaced again in many industries with the product it originally replaced Trichloroethylene, a not so nice product hence it got replaced with 111 T. The ozone hole was saved, if you believe it, but the lives of people were put at risk again. Oh that is right, the jobs were exported to China and India. Last time I looked India and China still produced 111 T, about 2 years ago.
So we invent a bunch of other fluoro’s where we have new patents on, keep the hype going. This certainly was an ongoing joke at ICI.
OK. How about we release all the CFC’s that would have been released all at once and “measure” what happens. What could go wrong? Let a bit more heat escape at the poles?
Kidding of course, but …. ?
That’s odd.
When the Montreal Protocol was enacted, we were told it would take until at LEAST 2050 for ozone depletion to stop, because of the long lifespan of CFCs in the upper atmosphere. Reversal of the loss? Even further down the road.
Which means they were wrong about the science. Again.
Perhaps it wasn’t “settled” science?
I seem to recall a physical chemist who claimed the cited reaction could not occur at the pressures and temperatures available at the ozone level of the atmosphere, but would require a pressure vessel with some added temperature/pressure to get the Gibbs free energy value (or one of the other thermodynamic properties) to a point to make it possible.
http://www.breadandbutterscience.com/OzoneHole.pdf
Alternative theory.
That they find themselves informed by a model is worrying. All they have is a speculative best guess as to what would have happened. The worst kind of ignorance is knowledge that is based on self-deception. This should be another story tagged with “creepy and a little scary”.
I’m sure the next generation of useful idiots at this same university will tell us all , 30 years from now, how the IPCCUN prevented Global Warming, headed off climate change and brought back the voting Dodo.
So from the abstract, no proof but it woulda,coulda been so ozone depleted up north without the UN treaty.
Same old song, bang those rocks together.. drive off the storms…
Shaman are usually more honest.
IPCC and its acolytes are indeed just like shaman, who were adept at duping gullible tribe members into parting with their hard-earned blubber or whatever resources with conjurer’s tricks.
Thanks to people like you, it’s very unlikely that global warming will have been averted 30 years from now.
It seems suspicious that the hole isn’t getting smaller. It’s just not getting larger as predicted by MODELS. Maybe the Montreal Protocol has done nothing and the hole that’s there has been there since forever. Maybe CFC’s had nothing to do with the hole in the first place.
It very much looks like just a slider bar change of the colour scheme for the same map data. Maybe I’m missing something but it appears their sophisticated models are actually just a little “slip of hand”.
This gravy train has lot of stops, point changes and shunting – beats Starlight, The Orient or Hogwarts Express – what fun it must be and the ticket to Platform 9 3/4 is nothing more than a BS paper someone will publish what fun!
Models are not empirical evidence of anything….
When did they test their model against reality to verify its mathematical representation is representative of earths systems?
Looks like they are manufacturing feathers for their Paris caps…
Now we have another chance to save the planet, this time from CO2 pollution.
Just don’t let the secret out that the last 3 decades featured the best weather and climate in almost 1,000 years(since the Medieval Warm Period), the biosphere and vegetative health is booming(thanks mostly to the higher CO2) and most creatures are either benefiting or not noticing the slight warming over the past century………….but again, we have one last, last chance before its too late to make big cuts in CO2 emissions.
Of course the reality is that one could never make a case for CFC’s being beneficial regardless of your view.
Increasing CO2, however is the best thing that humans have ever done for this planet.
CFCs were very useful as propellants in inhalers for asthma suffers.
Hi Mike, how right you are !!!
It’s truly amusing that the green “anti-CO2 = anti-greening the planet = anti-life” zealots want to have back the “good old” climate before the Industrial Revolution, that is to say Little Ice Age conditions with all its “nice” comforts like terrible long cold spells with accordingly high death tolls, bad growing conditions for basic food and frequent famine crises, or – last but not least and believe it or not – more extreme weather events:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379113003387
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0033589412000294
http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/39/11/1063.abstract
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/historical_storm_trends_france.pdf
CFC’s can not get up to the ozone layer, too heavy
Oy! You make my head hurt! Vapor bulk density has nothing to do with whether or not you’ll find traces of CFC’s in the stratosphere, troposphere, or wherever. By your reasoning, O2 should have settled out of the atmosphere long ago, since it’s 14% denser than N2. When gases and vapors are unconstrained physically, where they wind up is all about diffusion. If you didn’t have natural processes such as weather and the bio cycle mixing things up and allowing inhomogenities for atmospheric components such as methane, CO2, etc to exist, you’d wind up with a perfectly uniform gaseous mixture all over the planet, all other things being equal.
No doubt that some CFC’s will end up in the stratosphere. The question’s always been whether enough of them would end up there to make any real difference.
http://www.mitosyfraudes.org/Ingles2/AmazingOzone.html
Given as CFCs break down when exposed to uv – they must travel at night yes?
Reaction rates are important. They vary according to concentration of reactants. Higher concentration leads to higher reaction rates. Lower concentration leads to lower reaction rates. Since CFCs are significantly heavier than air and the ozone layer is above the tropopause, it follows that the concentration of CFCs in the ozone layer is small because CFCs can only get to the area where there is lots of ozone by diffusion. This means the reaction rates are low (very low).
Since ozone is always being created and destroyed, a low reaction rate with CFCs means that the CFCs have little effect on the ozone concentration. Also, lowering the concentration of ozone means more oxygen to be hit by UV and converted to ozone. Negative feedback! So the CFCs can only disturb the natural processes slightly.
No, some of it reaches the stratosphere. What invalidates the CFC theory is that, according to satellite data, the concentration of CFCs is higher at the equator than at the poles. and if CFCs were the cause of the ozone hole, this should be in the equator rather than at the poles, because is at the equator where CFCs are concentrated.
http://acd-ext.gsfc.nasa.gov/People/Jackman/Roche_1998.pdf
(that is the paper that shows CFCs distribution in the atmosphere)
The poles are where the VERY SPECIFIC conditions exist to break down ozone. It’s very very cold (<-80C) and there are tiny ice crystals that act as catalysts in the reaction of ozone with chlorine radicals. Also, the lack of UV light causes ozone production to plummet in Spring. But this happens whether there are CFCs in the atmosphere or not. It's the weather conditions in the stratosphere that cause the ozone depletion, not necessarily CFCs. If there were 100 years of ozone data, I'd be more convinced of the CFC hypothesis, but there are only about 30 years of data. Half of it is with CFC production and the other half is without. The halves look almost identical.
@george NaytowhowCon
F. Sherwood Rowland of the University of California at Irvine, who won a Nobel Prize for his work on atmospheric chemistry, answered the question:
HOW CAN CHLOROFLUOROCARBONS (CFCs) GET TO THE STRATOSPHERE IF THEY’RE HEAVIER THAN AIR?
Although the CFC molecules are indeed several times heavier than air, thousands of measurements have been made from balloons, aircraft and satellites demonstrating that the CFCs are actually present in the stratosphere. The atmosphere is not stagnant. Winds mix the atmosphere to altitudes far above the top of the stratosphere much faster than molecules can settle according to their weight. Gases such as CFCs that are insoluble in water and relatively unreactive in the lower atmosphere (below about 10 kilometers) are quickly mixed and therefore reach the stratosphere regardless of their weight.
Much can be learned about the atmospheric fate of compounds from the measured changes in concentration versus altitude. For example, the two gases carbon tetrafluoride (CF4, produced mainly as a by-product of the manufacture of aluminum) and CFC-11 (CCl3F, used in a variety of human activities) are both much heavier than air. Carbon tetrafluoride is completely unreactive in the lower 99.9 percent of the atmosphere, and measurements show it to be nearly uniformly distributed throughout the atmosphere as shown in the figure. There have also been measurements over the past two decades of several other completely unreactive gases, one lighter than air (neon) and some heavier than air (argon, krypton), which show that they also mix upward uniformly through the stratosphere regardless of their weight, just as observed with carbon tetrafluoride. CFC-11 is unreactive in the lower atmosphere (below about 15 kilometers) and is similarly uniformly mixed there, as shown. The abundance of CFC-11 decreases as the gas reaches higher altitudes, where it is broken down by high energy solar ultraviolet radiation. Chlorine released from this breakdown of CFC-11 and other CFCs remains in the stratosphere for several years, where it destroys many thousands of molecules of ozone.
And how does this destruction compare in quantity to the natural ozone production? Does it outweigh the action of heliospheric bombardment?
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ProtonOzone/
This is what I mean by bombardment.
please note the final quote:
Well I disagree.
I am pretty sure it was a model I made of a beautiful ruby red 1957 Chevy that did the trick with the ozone. The steering wheel actually turned the wheels, doors, trunk and hood opened and the seats had a cloth covering. The ozone had no chance against this model.
High energy, free radical reactions sometimes can be deceptive as to which way they actually go. It occurred to some of us that the reactions actually go the other way than advertised. Ozone chews up CFCs in a chain reaction, and when the free radical gets quenched, it gets regenerated by UV. It also seemed reasonable that the “ozone hole” was just normal decay during the polar winter, with no UV for a few months.
I have sometimes wondered how things would have turned out had there been anything like the CAGW sceptics around when the Ozone Hole scare was at it’s peak.
There were skeptics of the various ozone scares during the 1970s and 1980s, including Jim Lovelock, Richard Scorer, Hugh Ellsaesser and New Scientist. There was no internet.
A few weeks before congress was to vote on the Montreal Protocols, NASA released a report in which they proclaimed that they had found a northern hemisphere ozone hole that was growing larger.
About a month after the vote, they announced that we should ignore the previous announcement, it was the result of measurement error. But by then, the damage had been done, just as intended.
@MarkW
Sources would be nice.
Why did they pick the Arctic?
The Arctic winter stratosphere is much more dynamic than the Antarctic winter stratosphere. The position and size of the polar vortex plays a vital role the amount and distribution of total column ozone.
http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/meteorology/ozone_2014_MERRA_NH.html
If the Antarctic is difficult to model, the Arctic is nearly impossible:
http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/meteorology/figures/merra/ozone/toms_minn_2014_omi+merra.pdf
Take a look at the red and blue lines on the above chart – they look easy to model don’t they?
Can anyone say why ozone is at a minimum in the stratosphere at the same time of the year at both poles (September/October)?
Go here: http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/gmd/jra/atlas/eng/indexe_column0.htm
Select Column integrated ozone and look at March and October
Well this is a new spin on the “its worse than we thought” meme.
Instead of a prediction so far out in the future that proving or disproving it is impractical in our lifetimes, they’ve now come up with a prediction of something that might have happened in the past but is impractical to prove or disprove as we can’t rerun history. Genius.
I know. It made me smile too.
I just remembered that I worked on a ‘SO2 abatement’ project (design of an oxygen plant for a copper smelter) some ~20 years ago – and the job was in Montreal. So I probably benefitted financially from the fear of the ozone layer’s pending “destruction”.
Extreme UV Radiation Is Killing Our Trees
In short, geoengineering is destroying the ozone layer. Levels of UVB are now often up to 1000% higher than official agencies are disclosing, these are extremely dangerous levels. How do we know levels are this high? Because we can and are metering UV radiation. We are now even detecting UVC radiation at the surface, UVC is the last band of UV radiation before x-ray radiation. We are told by all “official” monitoring agencies that UVC is stopped 100,000 feet up in the atmosphere, this is also a lie. Back to the trees, what is all this radiation doing to them? The 2 minute video below illustrates one example of the harm being done.
http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/extreme-uv-radiation-is-killing-our-trees/
Fred,
Do you believe that?
We get CHEMTRAILED three times a week in NEW HAMPSHIRE!!!!!
Watch whales die of sunburn on youtube WHY?
Get an instrument in UNIVERSITY and measure yourself.
Climate Engineering Has Left Earth Perilously Exposed To Solar Flares
How much risk do solar flares or the even larger coronal mass ejections (CME’s) pose to our planet and our very existence? The dangers are far
[Reply: First and last warning: NO chemtrails commentary permitted here per site Policy. ~mod.]
~mod,
I present the following without commentary.
http://widelec.org/stuff/odpowiedni_kadr/odpowiedni_kadr_06.jpg
Done.
Do you want the result in inches or centimeters?
Max Photon — Chem trails — got to live it — Eugene WR Gallun
Please do not feed the herons bean burritos..
Here’s another from today’s Telegraph
http://s14.postimg.org/r04yhoka9/seagull.png
Perhaps we should add mosquito-cide to jet fuel and wipe out malaria and dengue, as well as those annoying itchy welts that develop when humans are exposed to mosquitoes. Who would miss them if they were gone?
“extreme-uv-radiation-is-killing-our-trees/”
Ahem Fred. That’s a funny website. Trees here in Germany are growing like crazy. So is the “scorching UVC radiation” only on your side of the atlantic? Maybe try watering them and come back and report.
Fred
UVC has never been stopped at 30K. Where do you get that?
The ozone hole was discovered in 1956, long before substantial human ODC emissions. It’s cause was determined in 1961 – completely natural.
Ozone is formed from atmospheric oxygen by UV light. O2 is 21% of atmosphere. There is no way a minute trace of ODC is going to overwhelm all that O2.
But what is science and facts compared to a 3D model?
There is a neat asymmetry between Dobson’s discovery of the springtime ozone hole in Halley Bay, Antarctica and Keeling’s discovery of the background CO2 trend in Hawaii. Both were due to Geophysical Year funding. However, these two impressive pieces of empirical science had very different trajectories, one heroic, the other forgotten.
‘Heroic’, ‘forgotten’? which planet do you live on?
This was just a dry run for the whole global warming scam. That and acid rain. Notice when something more gripping arose, these false alarms were reduced in importance?
WW
Find yourself a copy of
Thomas, D.S.G. and Middleton, N.J. (1994) “Desertification: Exploding the Myth” John Wiley & Sons
and check for another contender in the “dry run for the whole global warming scam” stakes IMO
The single best fire extinguisher ever built was the yellow BCF (Bromochlorodifluoromethane). It could be used on timber, paper, flammable liquids, electrical fires and just about everything else. BCF also went by the name Halon.
Its use was outlawed by the Montreal Protocol. Apparently airplanes are exempted as I’ve often seen BCF extinguisher on airliners.
It would be interesting to know how many fires were either not put out or put out more slowly since the restriction on use was brought in. The cost of the additional fire damage could be compared to the benefits of a better ozone layer, assuming we ever measure such a thing. (I’d be much more convinced by actual measurements than by simulations.)
EVERY action has side effects, even ‘saving the ozone layer’.
As with every environmental issue, there’s usually only one side of the story told.
At the time of the Montreal Protocol, I accepted it without question. After all, ‘scientists’ said we were ‘destroying the ozone layer’.
I now question EVERYTHING I’m told.
The law of unintended consequences permeates just about every effort by our Eco-saviors.
Wind = Raptor deaths
Water = habitat destruction
Organic = E. Coli
chemical ban = malaria
Fossil fuel = poverty and deaths from cold
A strong argument for “do nothing” government.
In one of the facilities I worked at in the Air Force, the center had a centralized Halon extinguisher system. When it was there we were not as concerned about how fast we got everyone out in a fire. It was replaced with a CO2 flood system which we could not actuate until we were certain everyone was out of the room. Neither was good to breath, but you could struggle through the Halon because it was concentrated on the electrical equipment. When the room atmosphere suddenly jumps to 40% CO2, no one gets out alive!
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/ozone_hole_hoax_was_the_preview_for_global_warming/
My understanding is you can measure ozone with a UV photometer and that these measurements have been going on for dozens of years. Showing depletion and renewal should be possible.
Prior to the use of satellites to get accurate measurements of solar radiation, it was assumed that UV levels varied no more than did visible light over the solar cycle. We now know that it varies as much as 10% over the course of a cycle.
The increases in UV that were being measured in the 70’s were the result of the sun ramping up, not ozone ramping down.
One thing for sure the UV is more harmfull in Cornwall UK than in Ontario! ten years ago I could spend a day in 35degree sun in Ontario without much sunburn, about then half an hour in the UK had my skin prickling and needing sunblock! even on overcast days people got badly sunburned, a lot less here and its sunnier and farther south! Im guesing there is way more UV getting through!
The title to this thread could have been:
University of Leeds to World: Shut Your O-Hole or We’ll Do It For You!
There has been a massive hit to the A/C industry that we’re still paying for. All over nothing. Not a good thing in an age of “global warming”. http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2010/02/the_cfc_ban_global_warmings_pi.html
I remember being reintroduced to the Ozone Hole when I went to get my accreditation as a Split A/C installer about 12 years ago. Wasn’t as naturally skeptical of politicised science back then.
Hope I haven’t missed a comment in the thread above but I’ve just dug up an item which I think was on icecap.us a few years ago. Selected text as follows:
“The first opportunity to actually measure the thickness of the ozone layer was when the first satellite carrying the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) was put into orbit in the late 1970s.”
In 2011, for the first time scientists also found a major depletion of ozone above the Arctic that resembled its South Pole counterpart. It can’t have been caused by CFCs, right?
“For the first time, sufficient loss occurred to reasonably be described as an Arctic ozone hole,” the researchers have noted.
So what’s this about “would have occurred if not for……”? The Icecap article reported that TOMS found a hole which had not been there 10 years earlier. Am I misunderstanding or misreading something<
The claim is just as lunatic as the claim of AGW causing a thermogeddon etc.
What both scares have in common is BS (Bad Science).
Ozone declines above the poles when the sun is active and recovers when the sun is less active.
You got that backwards. It’s the sun that turns O2 into O3.
It appears not. An active sun seems to accelerate ozone destruction over the poles and above 45km but increase ozone over the equator and below 45km.
Ozone increased above 45km when the sun became less active.
Well you are both right in away. Ultraviolet light (UV) creates ozone from oxygen and UV also creates oxygen from ozone
“The new research, led by scientists at the University of Leeds, simulated what the ozone hole would have been like today if nothing had been done.”
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32845485
…..”Simulated what the hole would have been like….?
Just imagine how easy it will be for climate scientists to simulate the success of CO2 reduction policies.
And how easily millions of dopes will believe the conjecture to be scientific evidence.
I use a “state of the art 3d model almost daily”. It does what I instruct it to do.
As our Stonehenge temple now plainly reveals, the sacrifice of this young (arrgh ack cough) virgin has once again stopped the disappearance of the Sun and the days are getting longer.
Along the way John Forbes Nash realized he was ill, mentally ill. This realization has yet to visit UK ‘researchers’ of their grand folly.
http://mholloway63.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/wg_ozone_hole.jpg
The ozone valley and the mountains of ozone surrounding it are a function of the polar region becoming isolated at the end of winter when the polar vortex reaches maximum speed (analogous to a worn clutch slipping at high torque, isolating the engine from the drive shaft). This prevents ozone-rich air from sunlit latitudes from migrating and mixing with the ozone-depleted air in the dark polar region.
When the sun rises in the Antarctic spring, the air warms, weakening the polar vortex, and lo!
…the surrounding mountains collapse and fill the valley with ozone.
It’s not a “problem” that will ever go away. This superb article by Mr. Watts explains it well:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/12/is-the-atmospheric-ozone-recovery-real-or-just-for-scoring-political-points/
(Watch the animation)
That Montreal Protocol also prevented attacks by crocodiles in Montreal.
Further propaganda to soften us for the Paris Party Bash later this year. The Pause was caused by the Kyoto Protocol.
People have to catch up with the news. The scam science paid for by Dupont Chemical during the ozone scare, and then lobbied by Dupont Chem., was admitted to by that scientist as a fraud only after the new refrigerant Dupont offered was out of patent recently. We now know that it is nitrogen gas and solar radiation that breaks down zone. CFCs were only demonized so that Dupont could offer a much more expensive refrigerant they already had under patent. The ozone scare was all about profits for Dupont Chemical. Nothing more, nothing less.
An old lie. The patent had expired years before.
Dupont fought the Freon lie very hard. But the press beat them up as being Earth Haters. It was a marketing nightmare for them. So they gave up fighting.
@gamecock I think you may be right but Dupont did like the Saudi royal family and gave plenty to the very organizations lobbying to hang them. Remember the whole division of Dupont that had to declare bankruptcy in the “leaking silicon titty”scandal? Even “Sixty minutes” did an expose’ on the junk science and testimony in the tsunami of lawsuit judgements in that case. I think we should name it “House of Saud syndrome” a disease that is frequently accompanied by conspiracy theory and get big pharma to create a treatment as they have for restless leg syndrome and fibromyialgia.
As I understood it the patent on Freon had expired but Dupont then just patented the process to MAKE Freon, and it was this patent that was coming up for expiration.
Personally I have no idea how much Dupont had a hand in the fraud of the ozone hole alarmism, but that they profited from it can hardly be doubted. Unless you want to argue that they DIDN’T have patents on the non CFC’s that came to replace what was outlawed? Nor can there be any doubt that the Ozone Hole scare was based on mistaken if not fraudulent science.
Personally I’ll leave placing the blame to those better able to dig out 53 truth then myself.
http://www.google.com/patents/US3258500
^That’s the process patent mentioned above.
Probably both readings are true. A company doesn’t get big having only one plan. DuPont had a profitable product, and fought to keep it, but the retreat may well have been strategic.
Robert of Ottawa:
Correct, this paper is designed to demonstrate that international agreements and the related government regulations are a ‘good thing’ for the earth’s atmosphere.
The hole in the ozone layer was a scam to see if we would fall for the global warming scam. As it is almost impossible for regular people, even scientists to check it, we have to go on trust. Even if some group were to get a plane to take samples, the scammers would trash the results on some technicality or just trash it because that is what liars do.Interesting how the ozone issue seems to have been completely forgotten. I wonder what will be the next scam other than “ocean acidification” and “sustainable development.”
All very interesting that the “solution” to all these scares is the same- destroy human technology, especially the reliance on fossil fuel use. In general, panaceas, although they have appeal, have thus far in human history ALL been shown to be BS.All rather convenient that the promulgators of the climate and ozone layer myths have stood to gain power, influence and money from their assertions. Remember, the UN (stands for United Nazis) have their 70th anniversary on October 24th. Like the Biblical 3 score and ten, hopefully the UN can die then too. May Paris see another Revolution-sovereign nations seeing the UN for the massive fraud it was from day one.
The question is what caused such a sudden drop in chlorine around 1995?
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150526/ncomms8233/fig_tab/ncomms8233_F1.html
The ozone hole over Antarctica (the white area).
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_MEAN_AMJ_SH_2015.gif
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_AMJ_SH_2015.gif
Abstract
A comprehensive glaciochemical study has been conducted at several Antarctic locations on the Antarctic plateau (South Pole Station, Dome C) and in more coastal regions (a few stations of Terre Adélie, East Antarctica). The objective was to investigate the sulfur, nitrogen, and halogen atmospheric cycles in very remote areas. In this paper the spatio-temporal variations of the Cl/Na ratio are reported for several hundred samples collected in snow pits or from firn and ice cores using contamination-free techniques. The Cl/Na weight ratio in snow is generally very close to that of bulk seawater (1.8) near the coast and begins to increase at the edge of the Antarctic plateau. In central areas, both relatively high and very low values are observed (excess chloride or excess sodium with respect to the 1.8 reference value), depending on the time period. Determination of all major ions (not fully reported in the present work) has provided an in-depth understanding of the chemical composition of Antarctic precipitation, explaining excess chloride and excess sodium by the presence in snow of HCl or Na2SO4, respectively, formed by the reaction of excess sulfate (biogenic H2SO4) with sea-salt particles in the aerosol phase. This reaction results in the release of gaseous HCl into the atmosphere. Short-term (seasonal) or long-term (climatic) variations observed in the sequences analyzed suggest that this reaction occurs more completely when weather conditions are calm and marine aerosol is aged. In central areas this alteration of marine aerosol can lead to excess chloride of up to 50% of total chloride deposition, and Na2SO4 can be equivalent to the sulfuric acid deposition. These results demonstrate the importance of the interaction between sulfur and chlorine cycles in the Antarctic atmosphere.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/JD093iD06p07153/full
ABSTRACT ABSTRACTA large pulse of atmospheric 36Cl generated by a limited number of nuclear tests peaked in the late 1950s to early 1960s. The corresponding enhanced 36Cl deposition is seen in various glaciological archives in the Northern Hemisphere. The profile of the bomb spike recorded in firn layers at Vostok Station, central East Antarctica, has been measured by employing accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS). The records obtained from two well-dated data sets collected in snow pits in 1997 and 1998 show a broad 36Cl peak, beginning as early as the 1940s and reaching its maximum in the 1960s. The signal is followed by a long-lasting tail up to the surface. This pattern is totally unexpected. We show that the results, unlike the Greenland data, can be explained by a mobility of HCl in the Antarctic firn. This experiment demonstrates the instability of gaseous Cl− deposits, a phenomenon which has important implications for the use of natural cosmogenic 36Cl radionuclides as a reliable dating tool for deep ice cores from low-accumulation areas. However, during glacial times, under favourable atmospheric chemistry conditions this dating method may still be applicable. Snow metamorphism and ventilation are assumed to be the two main physical processes responsible for the observed patterns.
Bomb‐test 36Cl measurements in Vostok snow (Antarctica) and the use of 36Cl as a dating tool for deep ice cores – ResearchGate. Available from: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/227670554_Bombtest_36Cl_measurements_in_Vostok_snow_%28Antarctica%29_and_the_use_of_36Cl_as_a_dating_tool_for_deep_ice_cores [accessed May 27, 2015].
CONCLUSION – SOURCES OF ACIDS
The spatial and temporal variations reported in this
paper provide information on the most important parameters
capable of a marked influence on the composition of acids
in Antarctic snow.
(I) The influence of remoteness from marine surfaces is
only appreciable for HCI.
(2) Equation (4) probably illustrates the formation of
particulate Na 2S04, which is deposited rapidly, and of
gaseous HC I, which is allowed to travel further inland.
(3) The fact that no clear spatial trend appears in the
H2
S04 content of snow does not signify that this acid
(“excess-sulphate”) is not of marine origin. This in fact
signifies that the life-time of H2
S04 in the Antarctic
troposphere is sufficiently long to allow a nearly even
deposition pattern over the study area.
(4) No effect could be detected on HN03 or HCI profiles
after the eruption of Agung, the impact being limited to
the concentrations of sulphate. This was also verified for
the eruptions of Tambora (I815) and Galunggung (I 822)
(Zanolini and others 1985). The sulphate profiles are
disturbed generally for 2 a after the eruption year and
more significantly in low accumulation areas of central
Antarctica than in coastal regions.
(5) Nitrogen compounds (NH~ and NOg) apparently have no
marine source as is also generally accepted at mid-latitudes.
(6) Nitric acid profiles exhibit relatively large spatial and
temporal variations. These variations are not sufficiently
typical to indicate one HN03 source rather than another. It
has been calculated that an important source of atmospheric
HN03 seems to be located in the upper troposphere in the
tropics (lightning) (Kley 1983). Long-range transport of this
acid to the south polar regions with a subsequent fallout at
mid-altitude sites in Antarctica (2000-3000 m) is one
possibility. Formation of this acid in the Antarctic
troposphere (perhaps by aurorae) cannot be ruled out.
Nevertheless our results demonstrate clearly that this acid
can sometimes be dominant in the acidity composition of
Antarctic snow.
http://www.igsoc.org:8080/annals/7/igs_annals_vol07_year1985_pg20-25.pdf
The ozone hole over the arctic was never as severe as the Antarctic simply because temperatures are higher during the Arctic Winter. According to the Danish BOM, most of the temperature increase in the Arctic has occurred over the Winter months so nature provides a very plausible explanation for the encouraging results. On the other hand, the lower temperatures experienced during the Antarctic Winters will not bode well for the Antarctic ozone hole.
This demonstrates that acidity
is satisfactorily explained by the sum of the three mineral
acids H2S04, HN03 and HCI. The proportion of the latter
(CI- exc) is, however, nearly negligible, especially in the
coastal area (Table 1I). The percentages given in this table
also show that in the last part of the traverse, acid
contributions amount to about 2/3 of the total ionic budget,
HN03 being the major ionic trace element present in
snow.
Finally, it must be noted that NH~ concentrations are
found to be very low and stable all along the traverse. This
observation shows that the degree of neutralization of the
acidity is low (as already found at other Antarctic
locations), and also that the Southern Ocean is not a source
of ammonia, a conclusion which is in agreement with most
works on the origin of this gas in the troposphere.
http://www.igsoc.org:8080/annals/7/igs_annals_vol07_year1985_pg20-25.pdf
The increase of rapid secondary electrons over Antarctica (GCRII), nitrogen oxides increases, and therefore the nitric acid, which increases the amount of chloride ions in the atmosphere.
The environmentalist story is to sell ‘saving the ozone layer’ as a great success. But it isn’t. Decades after the Montreal Protocol the hole in the ozone layer is still there, as big as ever. It was probably always there, a natural phenomenon that, before satellites, we were unaware of.
Nevertheless its proponents have received billions of dollars in funding, so for them it was a success.
From the NASA website
http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/new-results-from-inside-the-ozone-hole/#.VWWn2EaMcVd
From James Lovelock, the Green Guru…
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/mar/29/james-lovelock
No doubt about it; the MP gets trotted out as a “success story”, and as an example of how “dangerous” CO2 can be dealt with in similar fashion, as part of the run-up to their big Paris ClimateFest.
The paper itself is just one more example of Alarmist confirmation bias on steroids.
The only problem with all of this is that NOBODY has yet offered a mechanism for Northern Hemisphere Freon Release to somehow migrate and concentrate at the SOUTH Pole! The very first Environmental Scam of the 20th Century!
sz939 – not only that, but I also question how the CFCs get above the tropopause boundary into the stratosphere when vertical convection is capped *hard* by the tropopause.
Also, have CFC levels been actually directly measured in the stratospheric polar regions to a level of so-many parts-per-million (or billion…or trillion) or is it all inferred from ozone levels? The only real sampling was of chlorine monoxide (ClO) from an ER-2 at the NASA ‘ozone Watch’ web site but no numbers were given.
CFCs have been measured in the stratosphere on multiple occasions, here’s an example up to 35km:
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/12/11857/2012/acp-12-11857-2012.pdf
I’m pretty sure the ozone layer was going to do what the ozone layer was going to do and nobody should be taking credit for this.
If the Ozone hole is just a temporary seasonal feature, lasting just a few months at the end of the Antarctic winter, how can Ozone actually be destroyed.
It takes many years for the chemical reactions to replenish Ozone. We see that with the Stratospheric volcano eruptions. It might take 25 years or more.
All that happens is that the polar vortex moves the Ozone from 70S-90S to about 60S-70S. At the time the ozone hole is occurring, the area from 60S-70S has the highest levels of Ozone measured anywhere in the world at any time of the year.
It is just a seasonal function where the vortex moves the Ozone outside of the vortex and then it moves back in when the vortex becomes more moderate when the sunlight returns. This is very clear from the data.
Bill, you have the geography right. A seasonal maxima in Total Column Ozone occurs over Antarctica outside the margins of the hole when the hole is largest in the month of October. But the reason for the seasonal maximum in TCO is the lack of photolysis of ozone during the polar night together with the tendency of the NOx rich/ozone poor vortex to stall when surface pressure falls causing a reduction in the vorticity in the high pressure cell that sits over the pole. The polar stratosphere in winter strongly supports convection because the coolest temperature is found in the stratosphere at up to and beyond 10hPa. That is where the ‘tropopause’ is located. Yes, its a contradiction in terms, the tropopause is in the middle stratosphere. An enhanced tendency to convection carries with it the possibility of vortex disruption.
Think of the vortex as a local depression of the stratopause at the head of a cell of high pressure air that extends from the surface right up into the mesosphere. So, in fact the hole is actually mesospheric air, naturally deficient in ozone. Disrupt the vortex and its habitual location is flooded by ozone rich air from the periphery. This is described as a ‘sudden stratospheric warming’. Fragments of the old vortex air, now displaced, can be observed spinning away to lower latitudes. The vortex is monitored here: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/
There is an identity between ozone content, geopotential height and air temperature. A plot of any of these three variables tells us the same thing. In the polar night, ozone warms the air by absorbing long wave radiation from the Earth at 9-10um. So, the presence of high ozone levels close to the edge of the Nox vortex carries with it a potential for vortex disruption. The air over the polar cap (roughly congruent with the ozone hole) is observed to warm inversely with surface pressure. Surface pressure and the vorticity of the circulation are linked as in any pressure cell, high or low pressure, wherever located.
Yes, planetary waves are involved, but as effect, not cause.
And the Arctic and the Antarctic both experience a local depression of the stratopause over the pole. The difference lies in the difference in surface pressure between the two in winter and the consequent difference in the vorticity of the circulation and with it the extent of the depression of the stratopause. A severe depression of the stratopause is a visual indication of the quantity of mesospheric NOx that is entering the stratosphere. The severe depression of the stratopause over Antarctica is therefore associated with low ozone partial pressure across the entire southern hemisphere.
Current distribution of ozone over the southern polar circle.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_t50_sh_f00.gif
Visible ozone hole shifting in the direction of the Atlantic.
Ozone is created by the Solar EUV, period! Now that Solar EUV is on a downward trend due to the end of Solar Cycle 24, expect the Ozone Hole to reappear just like in 2006 {which had the largest measured Ozone Hole}!
NOTE: Try to find a graph of Solar EUV and Ozone creation! They don’t exist. Was the Ozone-gate the beginning of Climate-gate?
Ozone hole on Venus caused by CFC’s. Would not exist if the Venusian’s had simply passed their won Montreal Protocol.
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2010/09/Venus-Vortex-400×410-custom.jpg
Must. Not. Make. Joke. About. Uranus.
Doh!
Yeah, that is why Professor Chipperfield stores his dairy products, meats and medicines in the oven, and not in the frigde, because colder temperatures cause more loss. Maybe when he plays The Sims in his new 3D supercomputer.
Meanwhile in the real world, reactions slow down as temperature drops. Even ozone decomposes faster at higher temperatures.
Table 1: half-life of ozone in gas and water at different temperatures
http://oi61.tinypic.com/5v39ll.jpg
Read more: http://www.lenntech.es/biblioteca/ozone-decomposition.htm#ixzz3bLbGEgLo
I wonder what kind of chemical kinetics did Professor Chip study.
It is because ozone stay long in areas of the Polar Circle.
http://exp-studies.tor.ec.gc.ca/ozone/images/graphs/gl/current.gif
Evidently a good one unlike the HS school version you’re familiar with. Some reactions have a negative temperature rate coefficient, ever heard of engine ‘knock’? In the case of the ‘ozone hole’ the effect of low temperature is due to the formation of ‘Polar Stratospheric Clouds’, PSC’s, where important heterogeneous reactions are catalyzed, (did they cover those at your HS?)
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_kinetics :
Molecules at a higher temperature have more thermal energy, always, No exceptions. And those molecules with higher thermal energy can collide faster because they travel at higher speeds and when they collide they do it with more energy. Always, NO exceptions. There are no reactions where the rate increases as temperatures drops.
The only thing catalyst do is to provide a different reaction pathway with a lower activation energy. For this new reaction pathway same rule applies, higher temperature means faster degradation. And by the way, Professor Chipperfield does not mention PSC´s or catalysts.
Let me also cite “juice”, who replied to one of my post above,
(bolded mine)
I mostly agree with Juice, specially the bolded part. I am not convinced at all about the catalytic reactions, though. ozone is a very unstable molecule and chlorine radicals are even more unstable, and monoatomic, the activation energy of that reaction must be very low, There is no much room for improvement, and it does not explain how or whether these chlorine radicals are formed from CFCs. If those ice crystals also catalyze the rupture of CFCs, why don’t we see a massive CFC degradation when we mix CFCs and ice?
As you can see, apart from learning French, English and Basque in my HS, I also learnt some critical thinking, oh, and two semesters of latin, almost forgot. They were compulsory at that time.
Wow, Phil., you just got schooled.
Mark
urederra May 27, 2015 at 6:08 pm
Molecules at a higher temperature have more thermal energy, always, No exceptions. And those molecules with higher thermal energy can collide faster because they travel at higher speeds and when they collide they do it with more energy. Always, NO exceptions. There are no reactions where the rate increases as temperatures drops.
A clear example of ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing’, there are reactions where the rate increases as temperature drops, it is a well known feature of hydrocarbon oxidation. Always dangerous to make such dogmatic statements as you did based on no expertise in the subject.
The only thing catalyst do is to provide a different reaction pathway with a lower activation energy. For this new reaction pathway same rule applies, higher temperature means faster degradation. And by the way, Professor Chipperfield does not mention PSC´s or catalysts.
In this case a different reaction pathway is created due to presence of the ice surface which causes much more O3 degradation than the homogeneous reaction, higher temperature causes the disappearance of the ice and therefore the end of the enhanced mechanism.
Let me also cite “juice”, who replied to one of my post above,
Juice
May 27, 2015 at 7:56 am
The poles are where the VERY SPECIFIC conditions exist to break down ozone. It’s very very cold (<-80C) and there are tiny ice crystals that act as catalysts in the reaction of ozone with chlorine radicals. Also, the lack of UV light causes ozone production to plummet in Spring. But this happens whether there are CFCs in the atmosphere or not. It’s the weather conditions in the stratosphere that cause the ozone depletion, not necessarily CFCs. If there were 100 years of ozone data, I’d be more convinced of the CFC hypothesis, but there are only about 30 years of data. Half of it is with CFC production and the other half is without. The halves look almost identical.
I mostly agree with Juice, specially the bolded part. I am not convinced at all about the catalytic reactions, though. ozone is a very unstable molecule and chlorine radicals are even more unstable, and monoatomic, the activation energy of that reaction must be very low,
And you’re both wrong, the lack of UV light does not causes ozone production to plummet in Spring the absence of UV light through the winter stops production and depletion of O3. The heterogeneous reactions on the PSCs produce molecular chlorine which doesn’t react with the O3 in darkness, as soon as the UV returns in the spring the Cl2 is photolysed to Cl radicals which rapidly enters the catalytic cycle and destroys the O3 leading to the ‘hole’. A key feature of a catalytic reaction is not just that the activation energy of the reaction is reduced but also the catalyst is not consumed by the reaction, which is the case with the Cl radicals in O3 degradation.
There is no much room for improvement, and it does not explain how or whether these chlorine radicals are formed from CFCs. If those ice crystals also catalyze the rupture of CFCs, why don’t we see a massive CFC degradation when we mix CFCs and ice?
I suggest you read up on the subject rather than making things up. For a start the ‘ice’ crystals are a mix of nitric acid and water not pure water. In the atmosphere in the absence of PSCs many of the Cl radicals are removed by reactions with HCl, OH, HO2 & NO2 thus sequestering them and reducing the destruction of the O3.
In the presence of PSCs the NO2 is removed (forming the HNO3 in the crystals) thus preventing the above sequestration and increasing the destruction of O3. Also they provide a heterogeneous site where HCl and ClONO2 can react to produce Cl2(g) and HNO3(ice). So instead of the sequestration of Cl in the winter you release stable Cl2 into the stratosphere and remove the sequestrating species. As a result Cl is released when UV returns.
As you can see, apart from learning French, English and Basque in my HS, I also learnt some critical thinking, oh, and two semesters of latin, almost forgot. They were compulsory at that time.
No amount of ‘critical thinking’ helps when you don’t know the subject!
Phil. You got this bit right:, “the lack of UV light does not causes ozone production to plummet in Spring the absence of UV light through the winter stops production and depletion of O3”.
And in this statement you touch on the dynamics that actually determine the issue. The critical dynamic is actually the reduction in the depletion of O3 due to a lower incidence of short wave ionising radiation from the sun in winter. But spatial relations are all important. Read on.
First lets look at the ozone free vortex that is due to a local depression of the stratopause over the Antarctic continent. The air here has virtually no ozone and an enhanced content of NOx because it is mesospheric in origin. It is pulled into a cone shaped depression by the vorticity of a very large high pressure cell co-extensive with the Antarctic continent, that extends from the surface through to the mesosphere. In winter, atmospheric pressure over Antarctica reaches a global peak. This vortex (simply a local expression of the mesosphere) is what is measured as ‘the ozone hole’. The absence of ozone here has nothing to do with chlorine chemistry. It has a lot to do with the process of photolysis. Above the stratopause temperature declines due to diminishing levels of O3 and increasing levels of NOx. This is normal atmospheric chemistry relating to the wave lengths that will split the smaller nitrogen and the larger oxygen molecule and the even larger O3 molecule. The stratosphere is an expression of the relative freedom from photolysis that allows ozone to proliferate below 1hPa. Its partial pressure is greatest at 10hPa. Its density is greatest at 30hPa and it is manifestly present in the atmosphere at lower altitudes in diminishing quantities strictly in accordance with prevailing atmospheric dynamics at different latitudes.
Second, lets look at the margins of Antarctica between 60-70° of latitude where ozone concentration peaks in October. It does so with monotonous regularity between Antarctica and Australia where surface pressure is lowest. In fact the entire zone 60-70° of latitude south is a very particular place where the enhanced presence of ozone, peaking in the month of October is associated with a marked trough in surface pressure. Nowhere else on the entire globe do we see such a severe trough in surface pressure, and its obviously ‘annular’ or ring like in its shape. The presence of ozone in the profile at this latitude is associated with convection throughout the atmospheric profile and a marked increase in wind speed between the surface (where wind speed is already extreme) and 10hPa in the middle stratosphere.Air temperature declines throughout the profile favouring convection. Ozone is excited by long wave radiation at 9-10um from the Earth itself provoking a local increase in the temperature of the air above 500hPa (5.5km) and especially noticeable as low as 250hPa. The presence of ozone drives convection. It is important for surface climate because the process of convection involves what we think of as the troposphere AND ALSO what we think of as the stratosphere. What goes up must come down. Ozone rich air descends in high pressure cells, all high pressure cells, GLOBALLY. The consequence of the descent of ozone rich air into the troposphere is local heating and a consequent loss of cloud cover with a consequent increase in surface temperature. Change the ozone content of the stratosphere and you change surface temperature.
I reiterate: Change the ozone content of an atmospheric column and geopotential height is observed to increase throughout the profile. The 500hPa level is representative. And as GPH increases, in terms of the surface, a coextensive area is seen to warm as more solar radiation reaches the surface.
If you are are as diligent in learning about atmospheric dynamics as you are your chemistry you will change your mind about the nature of the ozone hole. Here is a great place to start.http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=mean_sea_level_pressure/orthographic=-340.09,-31.31,410 Notice the circulation of the air in the south East Atlantic is anticlockwise from 500hPa through to 10hPa. Click on the word ‘Earth’ and toggle around to see wind speed, temperature, surface pressure and lots of other interesting stuff.
In terms of changing climate at the surface, the concentration of ozone in the Antarctic atmosphere (that is globally influential in determining surface temperature and the flux in the planetary winds) appears to be locked into a 200 year cycle that relates to the changing quantum of material that the sun flings into its extensive local environment.
In fact, what I am talking about here is the nature of the ‘annular modes’ of interannual, decadal and centennial climate variation. See: http://www.atmos.colostate.edu/~davet/ao/ThompsonPapers/ThompsonWallaceJClim.pdf
This should be mainstream knowledge. That it isn’t reflects the inability of particular practitioners of particular branches of scientific endeavour, useful and worthy of respect as they manifestly are, to look beyond the end of their nose.
Erl, your theory doesn’t explain the dynamics of the disappearance of the Ozone.
Take a look at the sonde results:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/dv/iadv/graph.php?code=SPO&program=ozwv&type=vp
For example, the flight on 6 Sept 2014 showed peak ozone at ~17km of 16mPa.
By the 15th that peak has dropped to ~10 mPa between about 12 and 24 km but above and below that range it is unaffected. By the 26th there is now a pronounced minimum in that range ( ~2mPa), by the 29th the minimum hits ~0mPa. By 8th Oct there is no ozone between 15 and 18 km where a few weeks earlier there was a peak, above 23km there is still similar ozone concentrations as there was a month before (~8 mPa). This can not be explained by the descent of ozone-free air.
Hi Phil
There is nothing static about the vortex. Over the last 76 years the temperature of the polar cap at 10hPa has increased by 15°C in the month of October.Verify for yourself at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/timeseries/timeseries1.pl The temperature of the air at 10hPa relates to its ozone content.
The temperature of the air at 10hPa at 70-90° south is, in the first instance, a function of the vorticity of the circulation. Over the last 76 years surface pressure over the polar cap in October has fallen by about 10hPa while the temperature of the stratosphere at an elevation of 10hpa increased by 15°C. Surface pressure is a function of density in turn driven by the relationship between the temperature of the air over the polar cap vis a vis the temperature of the air elsewhere across the globe.The laws of physics apply here as elsewhere. The warming occurs in the polar night and following it through to November and it relates to vortex dynamics as a function of easily understood structural factors, the presence of ozone in high concentration outside the vortex and the support offered to convection by the temperature profile below 5-10hpa.
On an annual basis the temperature of the polar cap over Antarctica increased strongly prior to 1978 and has been falling slowly since that time. But the behaviour of temperature at 10hPa over the polar cap is different by the month. Looking at decadal averages February through to May saw little increase in temperature prior to 1978 and a temperature decline occurred after that year in those months. The decline began in later decades where the temperature increase was more severe and has involved other months in a progression across the decades. But in October temperature continued to increase. I would expect to see a decline in the temperature of the Antarctic stratosphere in October in the next 7-10 years and an increase in surface pressure over that time. The ‘ozone hole’ over Antarctica in the month of October will increase in size as surface pressure increases.
Verify for yourself the relationship between surface pressure and the temperature of the stratosphere over the polar cap by comparing the daily Antarctic oscillation Index and the temperature of the air at any level above 50hPa.
Erl the 10hPa altitude is well above the level at which O3 is depleted in the spring so I don’t see its relevance.
Phil,
At any altitude the the dynamics within this high pressure cell dictate change at different orders of magnitude but according to precisely the same time schedule. The ozone content of the Antarctic stratosphere peaks at precisely the same time that we observe the most extensive vortex of relatively ozone free air. And the temperature of the stratosphere over the polar cap taken as a whole has seen the greatest increase in that month when the vortex is most extensive. That is the observable reality. But you wont see it unless you look at the history. Choose to be blind if you wish.
The sad thing is that those who have promoted this narrative about ozone depletion due to chlorofluorocarbons persist when what we see is a simple depression of the stratopause over Antarctica. The geography of the southern hemisphere dictates that the vortex will be strong and in consequence the entire southern hemisphere is an ‘ozone hole’ by comparison with the northern hemisphere. This is a NOx story, not a CFC story. The CFC narrative includes no reference to the physical forces responsible. It takes no note of the relationship between surface pressure and vorticity, between surface pressure and the ozone content of the stratosphere and the feedback relationship that dictates a fall in surface pressure as the ozone content of the polar atmosphere increases. The narrative points to ‘planetary waves’ rather than vortex shrinkage or displacement as an explanation for temperature increase over the polar cap.The narrative includes a description of the dynamics of surface pressure change (annular modes) but refuses to acknowledge the relationship between temperature, air density, surface pressure and the vorticity of the polar circulation.
It is now possible to measure NOx and ozone at all levels across the stratosphere and represent it pictorially as here: http://macc.aeronomie.be/4_NRT_products/5_Browse_plots/1_Snapshot_maps/index.php?src=MACC_o-suite&l=TC%20.
The diagrams enable us to view the change in the Antarctic stratosphere week by week. It is instructive to look at the transition that occurs in November as the processes that dictate the ozone content of the stratosphere manifest in the Arctic and while they evaporate over the Antarctic. Choose the height and the tracer that you wish to monitor. There is an ozone hole in the Arctic and it appears when surface pressure is adequate to develop the required vorticity in the circulation …and its there even today but weak, reflecting the summer pattern.
The existence of a ‘vortex’ is not in doubt however your mechanism is not capable of explaining the actual evolution of the ‘ozone hole’, explain why O3 is only depleted between 23km and 12km, not above or below?
Phil,
The data that you refer to relates to ozone and temperature measurements at the US base at the South Pole. This is ‘little picture stuff’. There is a disconnect between the temperature that is logged and the measured ozone content. This tells me that the air is moving quickly.Its the very centre of the vortex. The vortex itself moves latitudinally while the vertical profile is in a state of constant flux. I would say these measurements indicate a dynamic situation. It would be like measuring the smoke content in a column of air above a fire.
Gaze at the sky and observe the way that clouds change in shape in a matter of minutes.
In other words: In would not seek to change public policy on the basis of measurements such as these.
erl happ May 30, 2015 at 5:06 pm
There is a disconnect between the temperature that is logged and the measured ozone content.
Explain what this is based on please.
Phil, If your check NCEP/GFS analyses and Forecasts at:http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/
Ozone content, geopotential height and atmospheric temperature are closely related. Higher ozone levels give rise to higher temperature and greater heights. Ozone heats the air via absorption of inrared at 9-10um in the peak of of the radiation band emitted by the Earth.
Each day at precisely 08:00 – I must say the words “Klaatu barada nikto”
If I don’t – the universe will pass out of existence!
The fact that the Universe is still here and quite visible… is ample proof, to any skeptics, that their children, and continued existence depends on me. No thanks required – just money. GK
[The mods need to know which 8:00 oclock. 8<) .mod]
As I recall, the Montreal Protocol that banned Freon only passed because they promised that banning it will get rid of the ozone hole. Well, it did not happen, not even when more tinkering was introduced. The promise that banning Freon will get rid of the ozone hole was a false promise, introduced to fool the public.. They obviously got their science wrong and it is time to admit that and cancel out the Montreal Protocol.
This is setting a precedent.
I predict that “global warming” science will tell us, when no warming occurs!, that their models show if CO2 levels had not been reduced then catastrophe would have occurred.
Climate Science is already adjusting the temperature record to fit the models.
If you go all the way back to the 1970s, an article appeared in “Science” (AAAS) that explained ozone depletion was occurring because of variations in ultraviolet output by the Sun. I have it downloaded somewhere. Here it is, Volume 192 page 555, 7 May 1976. Eleven-Year Variation in Polar Ozone and
Stratospheric-Ion Chemistry. This appeared in Science again in Vol 204 page 1304 “Ozone and Temperature Trends Associated with the 11-Year Solar Cycle”. 11 Jun 1979.
Just sayin.
Yes the observed fluctuations in O3 prior to the drop due to CFCs did correlate with the solar cycle.
http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/facts/images/halley_toms_ozone.png
It was after the 70s that the CFCs dramatically increased (and the O3 dropped).
http://www.theozonehole.com/images/cfc.ht42.jpg
Those charts are on a scale of parts per TRILLION yet you say that “CFCs dramatically increased”. It looks to me like they went from one incredibly tiny fraction of the atmosphere to another incredibly tiny fraction. If the scale was parts per billion (which is still extraordinarily small) you’d barely be able to see a change.
A 500% increase is dramatic.
Not when the starting value is so tiny. This is a perfect example of how using percentages can be extremely misleading.
No your point is a perfect example of a total lack of understanding of science.
For example, your blood contains about 4X10^-8 moles/litre of H+, double it and you’d be dead!
Something I said back in the 1980s:
1. The NH and SH have two almost completely separated atmospheres. The rising air flow in the Intertropical Convergence Zone and the pattern of the air flows in the Hadley cells mean that almost no air gets exhanged across the Equator.
Applying this to the possible flow of CFCs from the cities of the NH all the way down to Antarctica means that VERY little of the CFCs can even get to the Antarctic.
2. The CFCs were being released in those NH cities predominantyl, and guess what those cities had a lot of back in the 1980s? (as they still do now) OZONE ALERTS. TOO MUC OZONE. Right where the CFCs were being used most. Of courses, those CFCs ignored those easy-to-get-to ozone molecules in the cities in the NH – preferring to travel about 13,000 km to the South Pole instead (while running the barrier of the ITCZ).
And you know WHAT? NOBODY ever looked to see how those CFCs were interacting in the cities.
For me, that all was Green Lie #3. CAGW for me was #4.