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
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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.