New research has identified clear signs that the hole in the Antarctic ozone layer is beginning to close.
Scientists from the University of Leeds were part of an international team led by Professor Susan Solomon of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to confirm the first signs of healing of the ozone layer, which shields life on Earth from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays.
Recovery of the hole has varied from year to year, due in part to the effects of volcanic eruptions.
But accounting for the effects of these eruptions allowed the team to show that the ozone hole is healing, and they see no reason why the ozone hole should not close permanently by the middle of this century.
These encouraging new findings, published today in the journal Science, show that the average size of the ozone hole each September has shrunk by more than 1.7 million square miles since 2000 — about 18 times the area of the United Kingdom.
The research attributes this improvement to the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which heralded a ban the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) — then widely used in cooling appliances and aerosol cans.
Professor Solomon said: “We can now be confident that the things we’ve done have put the planet on a path to heal. We decided collectively, as a world, ‘Let’s get rid of these molecules’. We got rid of them, and now we’re seeing the planet respond.” Co-author Dr Ryan R Neely III, a Lecturer in Observational Atmospheric Science at Leeds, said: “Observations and computer models agree; healing of the Antarctic ozone has begun. We were also able to quantify the separate impacts of man-made pollutants, changes in temperature and winds, and volcanoes, on the size and magnitude of the Antarctic ozone hole.”
University of Leeds colleague and co-author Dr Anja Schmidt, an Academic Research Fellow in Volcanic Impacts, said: “The Montreal Protocol is a true success story that provided a solution to a global environmental issue.”
She added that the team’s research had shed new light on the part played by recent volcanic eruptions – such as at Calbuco in Chile in 2015 – in Antarctic ozone depletion.
“Despite the ozone layer recovering, there was a very large ozone hole in 2015,” she said. “We were able to show that some recent, rather small volcanic eruptions slightly delayed the recovery of the ozone layer.
“That is because such eruptions are a sporadic source of tiny airborne particles that provide the necessary chemical conditions for the chlorine from CFCs introduced to the atmosphere to react efficiently with ozone in the atmosphere above Antarctica. Thus, volcanic injections of particles cause greater than usual ozone depletion.”
The ozone hole begins growing each year when the sun returns to the South Polar cap from August, and reaches its peak in October – which has traditionally been the main focus for research.
The researchers believed they would get a clearer picture of the effects of chlorine by looking earlier in the year in September, when cold winter temperatures still prevail and the ozone hole is opening up. The team showed that as chlorine levels have decreased, the rate at which the hole opens up in September has slowed down.
Key facts
- Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey discovered in the mid-1980s that the October total ozone was dropping. From then on, scientists worldwide typically tracked ozone depletion using October measurements of Antarctic ozone
- Ozone is sensitive not just to chlorine, but also to temperature and sunlight. Chlorine eats away at ozone, but only if light is present and if the atmosphere is cold enough to create polar stratospheric clouds on which chlorine chemistry can occur
- Measurements have shown that ozone depletion starts each year in late August, as Antarctica emerges from its dark winter, and the hole is fully formed by early October
- The researchers focused on September because chlorine chemistry is firmly in control of the rate at which the hole forms at that time of year, so as chlorine has decreased, the rate of depletion has slowed down
- They tracked the yearly opening of the Antarctic ozone hole each September from 2000 to 2015, analysing ozone measurements taken from weather balloons and satellites, as well as satellite measurements of sulphur dioxide emitted by volcanoes, which can also enhance ozone depletion. And, they tracked meteorological changes, such as temperature and wind, which can shift the ozone hole back and forth.
- They then compared yearly September ozone measurements with computer simulations that predict ozone levels based on the amount of chlorine estimated to be present in the atmosphere from year to year. The researchers found that the ozone hole has declined compared to its peak size in 2000. They further found that this decline matched the model’s predictions, and that more than half the shrinkage was due solely to the reduction in atmospheric chlorine and bromine
- Chlorofluorocarbon chemicals (CFCs) last for up to 100 years in the atmosphere, so it will be many years before they disappear completely
- The reason there is an ozone hole in the Antarctic is that it is the coldest place on Earth — it is so cold that clouds form in the Antarctic stratosphere. Those clouds provide particles, surfaces on which the man-made chlorine from the chlorofluorocarbons reacts. This special chemistry is what makes ozone depletion worse in the Antarctic.
###
Further information
Dr Anja Schmidt is an Academic Research Fellow in Volcanic Impacts and Hazards at the University of Leeds’ School of Earth and Environment. Dr Ryan R. Neely III is a Lecturer in Observational Atmospheric Science at the Leeds-based National Centre for Atmospheric Science and Leeds’ School of Earth and Environment.
Scientists from the Atmospheric Chemistry Observations and Modeling (ACOM) Laboratory at National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, also worked on the research, which was supported in part by the National Science Foundation and the US Department of Energy.
* The paper, Emergence of Healing in the Antarctic Ozone Layer, is published in Science today.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2016/06/30/science.aae0061
Abstract
Industrial chlorofluorocarbons that cause ozone depletion have been phased out under the Montreal Protocol. A chemically-driven increase in polar ozone (or “healing”) is expected in response to this historic agreement. Observations and model calculations taken together indicate that the onset of healing of Antarctic ozone loss has now emerged in September. Fingerprints of September healing since 2000 are identified through (i) increases in ozone column amounts, (ii) changes in the vertical profile of ozone concentration, and (iii) decreases in the areal extent of the ozone hole. Along with chemistry, dynamical and temperature changes contribute to the healing, but could represent feedbacks to chemistry. Volcanic eruptions episodically interfere with healing, particularly during 2015 (when a record October ozone hole occurred following the Calbuco eruption).
So its healing in September but not August or October. This seems strange to me and, If I had the expertise, I would look at their data and statistics.
September/October is when the “hole” is largest.
Since ozone is unstable it must be constantly created by UV, and since the Antarctic is basically sunless most of its winter, it would seem logical that this is when less ozone should be seen.
So why would there be a “heeling” trend when Septembers are studied but no trend in other months? What is different in September that allows the average September hole to close that changes in anticipation of Thanksgiving?
It’s mostly an economic success story for DuPont? And there is a similar hole over Arctic about 6 months earlier in the year. I have read 2 studies that does not support the scientific basis for the Montreal convention. And the Sun has probably gotten less active the last years. The Ozone “hole” is caused by the air up there becoming very very cold.
The whole concept of a “hole” is fallacious spin.
What is the origin of the graphic at the top of this ariticle? It is unattributed and has a bogus unscientific scale. What kind of scientist replaces a true scale with meaningless “high and low” . I have seen another version of this graph and the blue and green areas represent around 200 and 300 dobson units.
A reduction of 30% is not at “hole”, it is a variation.
Sorry the graph is attributed to NASA, I meant there is no link to the source.
OK, here is the NASA graphic with a proper scale legend.
http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/facts/images/ozone_hole.jpg
My question is who derived the appropriately name “false-color” legend for the headline graphic, What is the source URL for that? Was it provided with the press release?
There is deliberate masking of the true nature of the “hole” by whoever produced that graphic. It is spin , not science.
Yup, both Tom in Florida and Santa Baby ….. “got it right”.
Atmospheric ozone (O3) is unstable and must be constantly created by the UV radiation in Solar irradiance (Sunlight) , thus the per se Ozone Hole “waxes and wanes” relative to the amount of UV radiation entering the atmosphere high above or atop Antarctica, ……. and “yes”, it was an economic success story for DuPont when they were instrumental in convincing the public and other parties of the importance to accuse and declare chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) as the “whipping-boy” responsible for atmospheric ozone depletion (Ozone Hole) and should be punished for said dastardly act by banishment of production and use of said CFC’s. (DuPont held the patent rights on Freon production, which was about to expire, and DuPont didn’t want their competition to “freely” produce and sell Freon.)
Quoting article:
HA, …… computer simulations + estimated quantities = 100% correct prediction.
Quoting article again:
Well “DUH”, September 22nd is the Autumnal Equinox which signals the “end of Winter” (or start of Spring) in the Southern Hemisphere …… and the Solar irradiance doesn’t have much “UV power” in it until mid-October thus the reason the Ozone Hole “reaches its peak in October”.
Just like in the Northern Hemisphere, whereby the Spring equinox occurs on March 20th, and the Solar irradiance doesn’t have much “UV power” in it until mid-April.
According to Dobson, the “Relative Ozone Lack” lasts about 3 months, and breaks down in November when the winter westerlies die down and the polar vortex, which goes right up to the stratosphere, breaks down and allows infilling from outside. The colder the stratospheric temp. the bigger the ozone deficit.
With good reason. Last October the hole was the largest on record. It appears they cherry picked a period where random variation showed a decrease.
Despite the so-called “healing”, last October was the largest ever hole. This contradiction has been attributed to a relatively small volcanic eruption in Chilli.
So what about the effects of the two massive stratospheric eruptions during the time they were originally noticing the “hole” in the mid 80s and 90s. El Chichon was in 1982 ( coincidence ? ) , the even larger Mt. Pinatubo eruption was in 1991.
Here is the effect those eruptions had on lower stratospheric temperature:
So they don’t even have any actual measurements of atmospheric clorine gas on with which to compare the ozone variations, neither do they have any experimental evidence of the proposed chemical prcesses in the relevant atmospheric conditions. It another non validated model. . They ‘estimate’ chlorine, hypothesise the reactions and then say it “matched”.
Well reducing the whole, artificial explanation into as binary : match / not match conclusion also tells me they pulling wool over our eyes. I want to see a graph and a correlation coefficient, not “matches”.
The political motivation here is in plain sight. They are trying to Montreal worked to justify Paris accord.
With the obvious fudging of the evidence, I don’t believe a word of it.
This is politics, not science.
The Ozone hole was discovered the same time as Dupont’s patent on CFC’s expired. What a fortunate co-incidence for Dupont, as the Montreal Protocol forced everyone to switch over to Dupont’s patented replacement for CFC’s.
“in a turnabout in 1986 DuPont, with new patents in hand, publicly condemned CFCs”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorofluorocarbon
ozone hole was “discovered “in 1957. Gordon Charles Dobson mentions the :interesting scientific phenomenon” inj his 1964 Article “40 Years of Ozone at Oxford-A History”.. Not a lot of cfcs in Antarctica back in the 1950s, unless you are talking about the naturally occurring cfcs produced by Mt Erebus.
Most CFCs were generated in the NORTHERN hemisphere. Why isn’t there a bigger hole over the Arctic? Answer: CFCs are not the problem.
O3 is created by UVC from the sun interacting with O2. Angle of incidence of the sun over the small latitudes is high, so lots of O3 over the tropics. Angle of incidence over the poles is low, so much less O3. That’s why ozone layer grows & shrinks with the seasons. South pole is slightly flatter than north pole, so less O3 over south pole.
Again, if CFCs were the cause, why doesn’t the northern hemisphere, with it’s much greater population and industry, have a bigger hole than the south?
If I recall right, they were surprised that the October hole was of record size while the September hole was much smaller. It couldn’t be that they went with the September hole or model results because the October hole did not fit the model results?
I thought life on earth evolved in an oxygen free atmosphere, with presumably no ozone.
A somewhat well known chemist essayist asserted that ozone is the end product of oxygen just doing its job of absorbing high energy solar photons, to create atomic oxygen, and hence ozone.
If the ozone layer wasn’t there; it would just be somewhere else, perhaps at lower altitude.
In any case, the hole has always been there, just never noticed until somebody noticed it.
The well known variable apparent color temperature of sunlight, both seasonal and random, is ample evidence of ozone fluctuations.
G
One thing that has always bothered me about this “Ozone Hole” problem is that 90 % of the “Ozone Killing” chlorofluorocarbons are generated in the Northern Hemisphere, so why do they only seem to affect the Antarctic (which is a semi closed system) ???
“semi closed” means not completely closed. Read the whole article; a brief description of the reason is near the end.
Indeed. CFC’s released in the NH migrate to the SH as was the claim the 80’s? It’s a miracle of anti-physics! Of course using the word “healing” just tickles the emotion strings. The whole article is bullcarp!
Was there ever an observation year without an ozone hole? If not, then the ozone hole is natural, which means that healing is bogus. Are there any ill effects coming due to the ozone hole? If not, then why refer to a reduction as healing?
As usual, “We have angered the Gods,” but our continued Good Behavior means Gaia is now “healing.”
As “Bill the Cat” in the funny papers would say, “Aaack! Phppttttt!”
The ozone hole over parts of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean have waxed and waned seasonally since observations began. The newspaper report I read of this press release inevitably made the link between this “success” story (world reduction in fluorocarbons leading to the ozone hole reduction) and the need to reduce CO2 thus having another “success” in limiting global warming. Fluorocarbon reduction was easy as there are practical alternatives for refrigeration. Apart from nuclear there are currently no practicable alternative to fossil fuels.
The whole problem with “the hole” is that there is absolutely no evidence that this has not always been the case. First observations showed ozone was thinner over Antarctica, later observations showed it had reduced further. Enviros started what has now become the established alarmist method of taking two data points, linking them with a straight line and projecting way out into the future on the baseless assumption that this “trend” will continue.
The did the same with variations in the gulf stream, as soon as it was discovered that its flow rate was not one of the universal constants of nature it was, OMG if this trend continues Europe will be like Canada.
It’s just another example of discounting the null hypothesis by jumping to a conclusion that supports a preconception.
Standard optics handbooks, reporting on the sun, as a natural “light” source , commonly refer to the seasonal and purely random variations in the apparent color Temperature of the sun as a thermal light source. Then they ascribe it to random and seasonal variations in the short wavelength end of the lower atmosphere solar spectrum. These observations date from long before somebody looked for an ozone hole and found it, and long before chloro-fluorocarbons.
As for the gulf stream, it will reverse its flow, when the earth reverses its direction of rotation.
Earth’s tidal bulge contains both potential and kinetic energy components. When the bulge runs into the coast ahead of it, that KE doesn’t just disappear. It gets converted into additional potential energy, which results in a transient increase in the sea level over and above the equilibrium level it would have in the absence of any land.
Once that conversion is completed on the Eastern coast of the Americas, it has to collapse, and that extra high sea has to move to somewhere else away from the equatorial regions, which means go north and south, where gravity is greater, and centrifugal force is weaker, towards both poles.
Adding a pinch of salt or notsalt, is not going to change a thing, so long as the earth keeps rotating the same way. If it switches, then we will have a warm tropical current flowing up the California coast, and we will have those fabulous tropical game fishes, instead of some crummy salmon.
But the Atlantic salmon will make a great comeback.
G
The ozone hole will never close permanently. The ozone hole outlines the magnetospheric footprint. Cold comes from space down the magnetospheric footprint.
This is what controls the size of the polar caps.
These are the 2 doors in the greenhouse that we call earth, and are controlled by the interaction of the solar wind, the earths magnetic field and the IPMF…
More energy(energy soak) comes down these than man is capable of trapping with his CO2. Because of the inflow of colder neutrals and ion mans signal will always be in the noise..
My response when I first saw that in the UK Telegraph was that it was more wishful thinking than a provable result. I suspect that some of this ozone hole stuff has come about because we were able to measure something and found something rather than finding something and the thing responsible for it.
But, there is the hypothesis. It makes the prediction of less hole in the future on a consistent basis. We will see the result.
The Montreal Protocol may very well have saved the ozone hole, who knows? The problem is that global warmists take this issue and conflate it to mean they are right about global warming too, when they are two entirely different issues (CO2:temperature and CFCs:Ozone depletion)
The fallacy is:
Bob is right about about issue A.
Therefore, Bob is right about issues B, C and D.
That is precisely my problem.
There’s no evidence that the Montreal Protocols have had any effect whatsoever on the so-called “ozone hole” over Antarctica. That doesn’t stop anyone from looking at the “hole’s” annual or seasonal variability and projecting future trends. I think that this kind of silly practice doesn’t advance human understanding by one iota, nor does it do anyone (except perhaps for Keynesian economists like Paul Krugman) a single bit of good.
It’s too bad we don’t know how long the “hole” has been there since it was conveniently “discovered” in the ’80’s. If it’s been thousands of years then Bob isn’t right about A.
It was re-discovered in the ’80’s. It was first discovered in 1956 by Dobson and a couple years later, it’s (natural) cause was explained in a paper by Rigaud & Leroy. It’s never going away.
All this “science” is nothing more than a fish becoming aware of the water in which it’s always been swimming. But people have been primed by thousands of years of anthropocentric, apocalyptic religions to believe it’s always “all about us.” It’d be funny to watch if it weren’t so pathetic.
Guess somebody ’round kindergarten must’ve slipped me the Red Pill . . .
It’s always been there as evidenced by the seasonal and random variations in the apparent color temperature of surface solar spectrum sunlight.
G
Is there a simple explanation why the chlorine in human created fluorocarbons is so much worse than the chlorine in the oceans? Surely the chlorine given off by wave action would swamp our measly contribution?
I believe that the reason relates to the chemical stability of fluorine compounds, because of its reactivity. That enables chloro-fluorocarbons to survive until they get high enough to encounter the higher energy UV photons, which eventually can break the fluorine bonds.
At lower altitudes where those high energy UVs can’t reach, the other halogens end up reacting with something else in the atmosphere, and get removed, before they can ascend to the upper atmosphere.
I would think that if chlorine can break up O3, that fluorine would do the very same thing; only faster.
But IANAC.
G
Geo – Riddle me this. Why is it that our fluorocarbons, which are complex molecules, heavier than air, find it so easy to defy gravity and make their way into the high atmosphere but, ozone, which is a major constituent of ground-based smog and about the same weight as air, cannot seem to make its way into the outer atmosphere and help us out a bit? Why is it that EVERYTHING man does works out to make things worse – always?
Bill
During a time of lower solar activity, such as now, the solar polar magnetic field strengths are much lower and more of the most energetic particles can escape from the sun. Our atmosphere is protecting us by reacting with those particles forming ozone, peroxides and nitrogenous oxides. Above the SH’s oceans more OH radicals are present, so peroxides are formed preferentially to ozone…..
So, there never was an ozone hole.
the problem is that peroxide concentrations were never checked….
when you check the absorption spectra of ozone and H2O2 you will find that they look almost identical. They are doing the same job: cooling the earth,
whilst the sun is at its brightest and most dangerous to humans (don’t go in the sun without a hat), earth is cooling…..
a paradox,
if ever there was one
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/07/02/scientists-claim-they-have-observed-first-signs-of-healing-in-the-antarctic-ozone-layer/#comment-2251587
WooHoo and Hallelujah!! We’re saved…The ozone hole is Healed!
(/snarc tag not included. Please the Owner’s Manuel for proper installation)
Dear Professor Solomon et al
I am always interested in good news. Could you please answer the following questions
1. How can the average ozone hole area in October at 22 msqkm and the area of temperature below -78C be only 8 msqkm. Temperature is a key controlling factor ?
2. The area of temperature below minus 78C ended late October, but the ozone hole blazed on until late December. How can this be?
Respectfully your
Kiwikid
“They then compared yearly September ozone measurements with computer simulations that predict ozone levels based on the amount of chlorine estimated to be present in the atmosphere from year to year. The researchers found that the ozone hole has declined compared to its peak size in 2000. They further found that this decline matched the model’s predictions, and that more than half the shrinkage was due solely to the reduction in atmospheric chlorine and bromine”
sure it is. anyone want to bet there is still a hole in the ozone layer down there come mid century. 50/50 the hole is bigger next year as well.
Heh, 50/50 the ozone hole will be bigger/smaller by 2100.
The “quieter” the Sun is (no Sunspots) ….. the more likely the Ozone Hole will increase in size.
Or should I say, ….. less likely to recover all of its Wintertime O3 loss when the UV radiation returns.
“Despite the ozone layer recovering, there was a very large ozone hole in 2015,” she said.
===============================
The Ozone hole is nothing of the sort. Down-welling cold air at the Poles strips the ozone from the poles and carries it towards the equator. You get these sorts of “holes” at the poles on Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, etc., etc.
The problem is that the length of observation is insufficiently long to have established the natural cycle, and thus any change is seen as unnatural.
Kinda like temperature on the global level, that. We have only been flying microwave temperature sounders since around Nimbus E. The CO2 temperature sounders could not go through clouds (odd that). The AMSU, etc. sounders have only been going since 1980. Too bad the old NEMS and SCAMS data from Nimbus E and F is no longer around as far as I know. It would all fit on a DVD these days I suspect. Analysis would take a day or two on my Mac if the various weighting functions, de-convolution stuff and what not was available. It would be interesting to push back the microwave record to the early 1970s. Staelin and Rosencranz et al. did a nice job with those sounders. Too bad Staelin has passed. He was a good guy.
Quite right. Only rare comments note that, as the ‘hole’ develops, there is a concomitant INCREASE in the ozone surrounding it – and a DECREASE as the ‘hole’ dissipates. These ‘holes’ also occur associated with the Tibetan Plateau and rarely with the Andaman ice cap. The common features appear to be high altitude and ice caps, which might explain why the Arctic ‘hole’ is weak or absent.
Another point about Antarctica is that the Mount Erebus active volcano is close to the edge of the ‘hole’. This volcano spews out some 450,000 tons of CHLORINE per year, which was more than half of the total amount of chlorine contained in CFCs produced worldwide, and that was in 1990! (ref EIR Vol 17, No 46, Nov 30, 1990).
All of this leaves me bemused at suggestions that man is responsible for the ‘hole’ and that banning CFCs (much to DuPont’s benefit, but that’s another story) is repairing same.
Did anyone check the peroxide concentration in the middle of the “hole”?
More Susan Solomon blather.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I understand there is absolutley no empirical evidence that stratospheric ozone in polar locations shows any correlation with concentrations of halogenated hydrocarbons (natural or man-made). Is there even any credible data on these CFC concentrations??
Ozone is produced naturally in the stratosphere by solar UV radiation interacting with oxygen molecules, and solar UV varies by 5-10 percent over annual and decadal timescales. so ozone should be expected to vary similarly
The “human causation of ozone depletion” was a BS hypothesis 20 years ago, and it remains unvalidated
These pseudo-scientists drive me batty
i agree. The “ozone hole” was discovered just aboiut the time they started to have the ability to measure it, so the CFC hypothesis has little baseline evidence.
They have been measuring “it” since 1957. They have been observing a gradual thinning of the ozone layer above the antarctic from the mid-1960s at a rate which coincides with accumulation of CFCs in the atmosphere.
http://www.citepa.org/en/air-and-climate/main-phenomena/ozone-layer
http://www.trunity.net/sam2/view/article/51cbf41d7896bb431f6aef04/?topic=51cbfc9ff702fc2ba8130176
Here is a link for one of the experiments cited in the above links.
http://geo.arc.nasa.gov/sge/jskiles/fliers/all_flier_prose/antarcticO3_condon/antarcticO3_condon.html
And simply because I’m an aircraft nut…
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/news/FactSheets/FS-046-DFRC.html
Thanks, Slipstick, here is the money graph from that link: the “direct evidence” that is it anthopogenic chlorine as the cause:
http://geo.arc.nasa.gov/sge/jskiles/fliers/gif_folder/image2/image2a.gif
So there is a striking anti-correlation but ONLY across less than 2 degree latitude of that transect. Either side of that narrow interval there is not obvious correlation whatsoever.
That NASA flight went down from Chilli and that latitude is just inside the Antarctic circle over the tip of the Antarctic peninsula,
At higher latitudes the correlation falls apart. There is some serious explanation needed as to why man-made chlorine compounds are responsible for this massive climatic variation, over an area larger than the whole of the Antarctic continent but are only seen to “work” over a narrow 1.5 degree band !
Note also that NASA only says : “strong evidence that manmade chemicals are involved in the Antarctic ozone loss process.” They do not say more than “involved”.
GeologyJim
You are on the right track. Bromine is a very important factor and it mostly comes from the ocean. Nothing to be done about it. There are agricultural sources of bromine of course.
According to Prof Lu of Waterloo the main interaction is between bromine and any available chlorine (minor and mostly not from human chemicals) and galactic cosmic rays.
As others have pointed out, it is not a hole, and the rising of the sun is necessary to have the chemical reaction complete. The GCRs set up the destruction. Removing CFC’s completely will not change the situation. Either the continent will have to move or the sun should become very active so the magnetosphere increases dramatically in size. That seems unlikely during my lifetime no matter what my ultimate age will be. Lu has it right (and used an actual atmospheric chamber, not a model with cherry-picked years) and the CFC alarmists have it wrong.
Check Eli Rabbet’s ‘take down’ of Prof Lu by demonstrating that the satellite data showed none of the effect predicted by Lu’s theory. See prof Lu’s reply that Eli had picked a satellite that didn’t pass over the region affected by the phenomenon, and Lu’s provision of data showing the theory is vindicated by measurements. Ozone over Antarctica has a powerful control over the venting of heat from the South Pole region, enough to explain all the temperature changes of the past 50 years, says Lu.
See Eli run and hide. It is on Eli’s blog, unless he removed it.
The paper above doesn’t cover the validated alternative explanation even though the GCR effect has been observed and replicated in a lab. It means the CFC explanation HAS to have been supported by cherry-picking or a model so wonky it can prove it was anything including my Aunt Matilda’s cooking cause the ozone hole.
Chlorine and bromine are involved, and the vast majority of it comes from the ocean just like most of the CO2.
This is another example of “Since all forest fires were caused by vulcanism, lightning, or impacts of extraterrestrial origin prior to man’s discovery of fire production, one fool with a match cannot start a forest fire and all evidence to the contrary should be ignored” reasoning.
The point is avoid sunbathing nude in Antarctica. “Problem” solved! 😉
“Healing”? Science gives way to anthropomorphism.
Pointman
blockquote> The “human causation of ozone depletion” was a BS hypothesis 20 years ago, and it remains unvalidated /blockquote>
I thought pretty much the same – and it’s still quite possible that ozone depletion is due to natural factors, – but having looked at ALL the data I reckon that CFCs are the most likely explanation.
Ground based observations of stratospheric ozone above the antarctic have been made since 1957. They agree quite closely with the satellite observations. No hole is apparent in the earlier data but there is a measured thinning of the ozone layer throughout the 1970s. The hole (i.e. an area below a specific threshold of ozone “thickness”) is observed by both ground-based and satellite measurements.
Interational ‘Year of the Quiet Sun’, c.1964, 7yrs after the IGY……….Some of us know what that means. Dobson understood, I think. The BAS proto-hippies didn’t seem to.
bullcrap….They have no history and have no way of knowing what’s normal and what’s not
They know that no hole was evident in the 1950s and early 1960s. And they know that the ozone layer was rapidly thinning throughout the 1970s.
I’m more interested in knowing if the ozone layer had also thinned in 19th, 18th, 17th, centuries, for example. Then a true comparison of natural vs cfc’s could be determined. Just knowing from 1950 is BS, as that is simply a correlation.
exactly kokoda……was the 50’s and 60’s some freak event that will never happen again?
Why do people assume that some snapshot of something…..is normal
John Finn
July 2, 2016 at 4:22 pm :
John Finn, if you check the chemistry, you find that the available energy is not there to run the CFC/Ozone reactions. Normal halogens from seawater,, and UV flux strregths, they tell a different story. For starters:
http://www.ozoneapplications.com/
Iodine, bromine, and chlorine in winter aerosols and snow from
Barrow, Alaska
By ROBERT A. DUCE,’ JOHN W. WINCHESTER and THEODORE W. VAN NAHL,
Department of Geology and Geophysics, 54-1220 M.I.T., Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 12, 1353–1365, 2012
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/12/1353/2012/
doi:10.5194/acp-12-1353-2012
AN EMPIRICAL TEST OF THE CHEMICAL THEORY OF OZONE DEPLETION
JAMAL MUNSHI
doi:10.1038/449382a
Signs point to UV etc. doing the job at both ends, and it is in decline slowly as the sun quietens. But this process is uneven and seasonal.
There is no knowledge of the ozone hole before it was discovered accidentally in the 70’s.
Scientists do not react favourably to peer reviewed scientific papers like this, when the abstract opens with non-scientifis social chatter.
There is no place in scientific reports for chattering class belief and speculation.
Geoff
THE OZONE HOLE IS DUE TO NATURAL PROCESSES END OF STORY.
You are absolutely correct, all that is needed is the documentation and explanation
the correlation between the cycles of ozone thinning and frostflower creation suggests the human created four-times-heavier-than-air HCl’s *might* not have been a contributor at all. We find what.. Chlorine and bromine and even iodine.. so where’s the fluorine so prevalent in human created HFC’s ? If the HCl’s and HBr’s can supposedly make it up there, why not HF’s?
Forst flowers:
http://images.viralnova.com/000/019/486/ice-flowers6.jpg
Such documentation and explanation have existed since 1959 in a paper by Rigaud, P. and B. Leroy. When the ozone depletion panic erupted, they re-published their work in 1990:
“Presumptive Evidence for a Low Value of Total Ozone Content Above Antarctica in September, 1958”, Anales de Geophysique, 1990, Volume 8 (11), pp. 791 – 94.
Karl – you ask about Hfs. They are present. Mount Erebus emits about 480 tons per day along with some 1,230 tons of HCl. That is each and every day and Erebus is around the edge of the ‘holes’.
Right you are. NASA noticed it in their satellite photos in 1985 and pushed the enviro-panic button. One of their people (quite sensibly) thought that such a large “hole” shouldn’t have appeared so suddenly and looked at archived photos, and sure enough, there it was, going all the way back to 1972 when their satellite photos began. Previously they had thought what they were seeing was refractive distortion caused by the curvature of the earth’s atmosphere.
This is not the first time scientists have announced the good news that the hole in the ozone layer is healing. This story dates back to 2006.
Everything affects the ozone layer. I am skeptical that either group of scientists have adequately controlled for all the possible variables. Here’s a prediction that the hole will be particularly large 2019-2020.
Did anyone notice the influence of the volcanoes appears to outweigh the supposed influence of man-made CFCs?
It is pretty obvious that Ozone levels are determined by volcanoes.
It takes more than 25 years for Ozone to rebuild after a stratospheric volcanic eruption. The last one was 1991 so we are right on schedule for the rebuild time-line.
The other issue is that Antarctic Ozone does not disappear in the September/October Ozone hole period. It is merely redistributed to the 45S to 55S latitudes by the south polar vortex and after September/October, it moves back in to the south polar areas. The highest Ozone levels in the stratosphere on the entire planet are in the September/October period in the 45S to 55S latitudes. Big deal. Hole at the poles, highest levels on the planet just 20 to 30 degrees away.
The 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption injected more “ODC’s” into the stratosphere than were emitted by all human activity in a year. NASA detected it drifting toward Canada and warned that there would be massive ozone depletion over that country in the summer. I remember the 3 inch, panic inducing headlines well. It didn’t happen. That fall there was a small column in the back pages of the paper reporting that scientists were at a loss to explain why.
Never let the facts get in the way of a good environmental scare.
Visit the official ozone hole website and just look at the data they publish there.
http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/statistics/annual_data.html
Notice the incredible growth of the hole from 1979 to 1989. Since then, it’s been flat to rising slightly. I don’t seen any healing since then. It would take a true master statistician to make this data show healing. I suspect they are saying that things would be a lot worse if not for the Montreal treaty.
But, of course, money has been made. And power has been obtained. Those are the important things.
Do you all remember the hysteria about the ozone hole before they signed the Montreal treaty? Where is that hysteria today?
It is amazing they publish this data on line.
Thanks for the link Joel. Here is a plot of the sept-oct max each year. Basically it has been flat since just after Mt Pinatubo. Since it is claimed that CFCs stay in the atmosphere for “hundreds of years” and the Montreal protocol, signed in 1990 took about a decade to even start to take effect. It become pretty hard to maintain that it had any causal effect on the “healing” of the ozone hole.
Look like another of the pesky ‘hiatus’ things.
blockquote> Notice the incredible growth of the hole from 1979 to 1989.
That occurred to me at first – but just looking at the “hole” dimensions is misleading. It’s the actual layer thickness which shows the true effect. In 1979 it was about 200 DU but in 1957(until about 1965) ground based observations show it was over 300 DU. In more recent times it’s dropped to below 100 DU.
Volcanic eruptions act as a spur but they’re not the whole story. There’s something else going on which does coincide with the accumulation of CFCs in the atmosphere.
Mt Erebus is a strato-volcano ( 3,794 metres, 12,448 ft above sea level) that has been belching tremendous volumes of hydrochloric acid, hydrofluoric acid and carbon dioxide) into the Antarctic stratosphere for several decades.
Into the troposphere not the stratosphere from a lava lake, the HCl and HF are minor components of the plume. Tropospheric O3 depletion in the plume has been observed due to BrO chemistry up to 30 km downstream.
Hi Phil.
I am impressed with your knowledge of TOA chemistry.
Do you know if ever they checked for peroxides inside ‘the hole’
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/07/02/scientists-claim-they-have-observed-first-signs-of-healing-in-the-antarctic-ozone-layer/#comment-2251488
Nowadays, after following the climate alarmist scam for a few years, whenever the heading has “scientists claim” in it, I smile and move on.
In terms of welfare of almost all life on Earth the ozone “hole” is a big so what . It occurs only in the polar night when there is no UV to create O3 and disappears when the Sun reappears . It never will not happen .
It occurs in the polar spring, not the night.
After… the long polar night. ; )
What about the impact of the outgassing from Mt Erebus? It ejects large amounts of Cl2, SO2 and other gases etc and the residues are over the entire continent.
Tich, that’s natural Chlorine, not man-made so it doesn’t count.
Nature’s output is something like four orders of magnitude greater
than man-kinds, but apparently the halons in manmade CFCs are
“special.”
…OMG…NASA still does real science !
“NASA’s Juno spacecraft set for close encounter with Jupiter”
http://video.foxnews.com/v/5017931844001/nasas-juno-spacecraft-set-for-close-encounter-with-jupiter/?intcmp=hphz01#sp=show-clips
This looks like the “money shot” to me;
” “We can now be confident that the things we’ve done have put the planet on a path to heal. We decided collectively, as a world, ‘Let’s get rid of these molecules’. We got rid of them, and now we’re seeing the planet respond.” Co-author Dr Ryan R Neely III, a Lecturer in Observational Atmospheric Science at Leeds, said: “Observations and computer models agree; healing of the Antarctic ozone has begun. We were also able to quantify the separate impacts of man-made pollutants, changes in temperature and winds, and volcanoes, on the size and magnitude of the Antarctic ozone hole.” ”
*See? The modelers ought to be believed, they have demonstrated their skill, and we all need to act collectively based on what they tell us. They are the scientific experts after-all, and they have reached a consensus.*
My thought too. They need to provide a “win” so they can knock down the growing level of doubt and get back to the scheduled program.