Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to a new study, the Montreal protocol is protecting the ability of plants to absorb CO2, preventing an 0.8C surge in global warming.
Scientists reveal how landmark CFC ban gave planet fighting chance against global warming
18 August 2021 16:01
Without the global CFC ban we would already be facing the reality of a ‘scorched earth’, according to researchers measuring the impact of the Montreal Protocol.
Their new evidence reveals the planet’s critical ability to absorb carbon from the atmosphere could have been massively degraded sending global temperatures soaring if we still used ozone-destroying chemicals such as CFCs.
New modelling by the international team of scientists from the UK, USA and New Zealand, published today in Nature, paints a dramatic vision of a scorched planet Earth without the Montreal Protocol, what they call the “World Avoided”. This study draws a new stark link between two major environmental concerns – the hole in the ozone layer and global warming.
…
Their findings, outlined in the paper ‘The Montreal Protocol protects the terrestrial carbon sink’, show that banning CFCs has protected the climate in two ways – curbing their greenhouse effect and, by protecting the ozone layer, shielding plants from damaging increases in ultraviolet radiation (UV). Critically, this has protected plant’s ability to soak up and lock in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and so prevented a further acceleration of climate change.
…
Overall, by the end of this century without the Montreal Protocol CFC ban:
· There would have been 580 billion tonnes less carbon stored in forests, other vegetation and soils.
· There would be an additional 165-215 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere, depending on the future scenario of fossil fuel emissions. Compared to today’s 420 parts per million CO2, this is an additional 40-50%.
· The huge amount of additional CO2 would have contributed to an additional 0.8°C of warming through its greenhouse effect.
…
The abstract of the study;
The Montreal Protocol protects the terrestrial carbon sink
Paul J. Young, Anna B. Harper, Chris Huntingford, Nigel D. Paul, Olaf Morgenstern, Paul A. Newman, Luke D. Oman, Sasha Madronich & Rolando R. Garcia
The control of the production of ozone-depleting substances through the Montreal Protocol means that the stratospheric ozone layer is recovering1 and that consequent increases in harmful surface ultraviolet radiation are being avoided2,3. The Montreal Protocol has co-benefits for climate change mitigation, because ozone-depleting substances are potent greenhouse gases4,5,6,7. The avoided ultraviolet radiation and climate change also have co-benefits for plants and their capacity to store carbon through photosynthesis8, but this has not previously been investigated. Here, using a modelling framework that couples ozone depletion, climate change, damage to plants by ultraviolet radiation and the carbon cycle, we explore the benefits of avoided increases in ultraviolet radiation and changes in climate on the terrestrial biosphere and its capacity as a carbon sink. Considering a range of strengths for the effect of ultraviolet radiation on plant growth8,9,10,11,12, we estimate that there could have been 325–690 billion tonnes less carbon held in plants and soils by the end of this century (2080–2099) without the Montreal Protocol (as compared to climate projections with controls on ozone-depleting substances). This change could have resulted in an additional 115–235 parts per million of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which might have led to additional warming of global-mean surface temperature by 0.50–1.0 degrees. Our findings suggest that the Montreal Protocol may also be helping to mitigate climate change through avoided decreases in the land carbon sink.
Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03737-3
Obviously there is not much wheat production in Antarctica, so the top of the page is a historic graph of Australian wheat production. I personally cannot see obvious evidence of significant UV damage to production during the period when the southern ozone hole was at its greatest extent in the 1990s.
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It’s models, models I tell you, all the way down!
I wonder if Biden had an exit strategy model for Afghanistan 🤔
Sounds like he chose the “scorched earth” model.
morons like Biden don’t have strategies. They have feelings.
Feelings guide them to really bad places. But this moron is dragging the entire US and the Free World with him. The sooner he resigns, even if it is the unlikable Camel Harris to replace him, the better.
The Moron Biden has no credibility anywhere in the world. The incompetence now on display and his denials of culpability put even his defenders on their heels.The Leftist media will soon start abandoning him and then the walls and ceiling will come down on him faster than Kabul fell to those 8th Century barbarians.
Check these out:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/08/biden-effect-us-lost-several-military-aircraft-flown-afghanistan-no-idea-many-lost-video/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/08/breaking-british-para-troops-running-vehicle-patrols-center-kabul-extract-trapped-uk-citizens-biden-abandons-trapped-americans/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/08/joe-biden-dismisses-afghans-falling-planes-plunging-death-4-5-days-ago-2-days-ago-video/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/08/unbelievable-incompetence-biden-regime-canceled-trump-program-oversee-evacuation-us-citizens-stationed-overseas-june/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/08/joe-biden-scheduled-head-back-delaware-tomorrow-long-weekend-amid-afghanistan-crisis/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/08/biden-says-not-see-way-withdraw-afghanistan-without-chaos-ensuing-video/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/08/afghanistan-another-dunkirk-situation-president-trump-compares-afghanistan-world-war-ii-nightmare/
This is way beyond anything a political-military drama writer would dare put into fiction.
One thing about it, we are going to know every detail of this debacle eventually. Both political parties are clamoring for investigations.
Yeah, and when will the democrat Senators take the drive to the WH and tell Dementia Man it is time to “spend more time with the family”?
Everybody wants a hand in writing history
I suspect the only one who doesn’t know what is going on is Biden.
The interview he gave this week was an absolute disaster.
He’s already put a lid on for the week and gone back to Del to hide from the mean people.
“The Moron Biden has no credibility anywhere in the world.”
Yes, I think that is the biggest personal damage to Biden. He has lost credibility both abroad and here at home and in both political parties.
Biden made an extremely bad move, and it is obvious to everyone.
I love the way he starts out by taking full responsibility. Then proceeds to blame everyone else.
Taking responsibility means nothing in the western world; it’s just a way of closing off the subject with nothing happening to the “responsible” person, department, etc.
The Left eats its own when they don’t toe the line!
Bozo —– Biden’s organizational zoo oligarchy
Bad science drives out good science.
Gresham’s Law.
It gets ever goonier.
A grant award system that rewards alarmism drives out good science.
…and turtles.
A quick internet search shows that UV is not harmful to plants.
Not a lot of plants around Antarctica either.
The primary productivity of the Southern Ocean is phytoplankton based. Every marine mammal (whale dolphins, etc) and bird (penguins and sea birds) depends on the primary productivity pushing food up the trophic levels of the food chain.
UV does penetrate to some depth, whiuch can “theroetically” be harmful at high levels to phytoplankton, but most of the Southern Ocean areas are covered in clouds, mist and low fogs in the summer months when the Sun is shining longer hours.
The Sun shines from the side at the poles. It is not directly overhead where the atmosphere is thinnest. Atmospheric thickness would more than compensate for increased UV.
And, something that I have not seen an explanation for is that, there is typically asymmetric, anomalously high concentrations of ozone outside the circumpolar vortex. It appears to me that the asymmetry is a result of some of the tropically-generated ozone being able to diffuse across the vortex boundary.
Found an interesting video recently (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M18HxXve3CM) describing ‘How whales change climate’.
I thought someone might call me on that and perhaps I should have clarified that I meant land based plants.
Nevertheless, I should also point out that the ozone “hole” is a winter/spring phenomena, a period when the effect mentioned by Alexy S. is especially applicable.
It sounds silly. But I lent the idea some attention and have observed that plants are actually not rocks.
They are alive.
If UV is harmful to plants, plants adapt in at least two ways; they evolve to be less harmed or they emit moisture / particles to seed clouds.
The rain-forests are often in latitudes where the sun is strong. But they are cloudy.
PS, Scissor, I hope you saw my apology – linked below – for the earlier misunderstanding.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/08/16/worst-frosts-hit-brazil-adjusted-away/#comment-3319627
No worries, thank you for your kindness.
“I should also point out that the ozone “hole” is a winter/spring phenomena”
A natural phenomenon.
Is there any evidence that human activities affect the ozone hole?
I recall that BAS ever so quietly announced recently that the “hole” in the ozone layer could be a natural annually recurring phenomenon, then went awfully quiet again!!! They probably want to make sure the grant money keeps flowing!!!
Good question. Some exists.
I used to thing that a Nobel Prize in Chemistry carried scientific credibility. Crutzen, Molina and Rowland won the Nobel prize for their work on ozone formation and decomposition. I know they got a lot of their work right but perhaps politically it was hijacked.
We have been around on this issue before of the UV absorption of water. Consider that whales and dolphins routinely swim at the surface. However, if they get beached, and no longer have even a thin film of water covering them, they get sun burned.
Well, it’s definitely important for them. They’ll die without it!
Clearly the wheat crop seems to be doing well despite changes in UV…
Avoiding that 0.8C rise made all the difference.
0.8C would result in “scorched earth”?
These clowns don’t understand where the sun shines from. They’re not even flat-earthers, they think Earth is in the shape of a bowl.
Plants respond to increased UV with likely ancient molecular signalling pathways that turn on protective responses. Just like we humans “tan” (produce melanin) in response to UV to protect our nucleic acids in dermis and basal skin cells, so do plants.
The authors’ claims about the Montreal Protocol and UV are just hyped junk that serves a political purpose.
Footprints of the sun: memory of UV and light stress in plantshttps://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25278950/
Yep. Its why high altitude grown hashish is so much better – more UV seems to trigger greater cannabis production.
It seems reasonable that terpenes and cannabinoids at least partially play a UV protection role. The terpenes would also attract insects for pollination. However, both of these chemical species peak in late season when sunlight is waning. It’s also the flowering time and the terpenes and cannabinoids are concentrated at the flower, so perhaps sex is the chief driver.
I suppose that varieties have been selected through cultivation for their particular effect over the past 10,000 years or so.
A quick search finds statements supporting both sides of the argument:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2017.00278/full#:~:text=Under%20high%20Photosynthetic%20active%20radiation,are%20exposed%20to%20UV%2DB.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/UVB/uvb_radiation2.php
From your second link:
As skiers are all too aware, one can get sun burned much more quickly in the mountains than at the seashore. Is there evidence that those living in the mountains have a higher incidence of non-melanoma skin cancer than those living on the coast?
The same article says unequivocally:
However, it also says:
This is just a manufactured excuse for CAGW not happening, now or in the future.
The whole Montreal ozone hole strictures saved the world allegation smells of desperation.
It’s along the same lines as the alarmist blaming SO2 for the cooling that took place from the 1940’s to 1980. SO2 supposedly overwhelmed the warming power of CO2 during that period, according to the alarmists.
Of course there is no evidence that the Montreal Protocols had any impact whatsoever. But what the heck, we have a religion to protect.
Any port in a storm.
As with CO2 warming, a real scientist would require evidence that humans are affecting the ozone hole, before declaring they are.
There were plenty of ‘declarations,’ but weak evidence. The biggest fraud was the concern over what more UV at the surface might do, but there were almost no actual measurements. Instead, the annually varying ozone was measured, and then based on imperfectly known atmospheric relationships, and ignored geometric relationships, simplistic models predicted the possibility of increased surface UV.
Unbelievable balderdash. Plants don’t ‘lock in’ carbon dioxide! They are part of the carbon CYCLE.
I detest Carbon Cycle deniers.
Of course, it turned out “the ozone hole” had nothing to do with CFCs so can’t see how one can derive anything from the Montreal Protocol.
I derived a crappy car air conditioner. My ’64 Biscayne wagon in college spit ice cubes out of the dash on 95° days. Today’s air conditioners are good, but not like that.
Absolutely. Anyone, go look up Dr. G.M.B. Dobson, who did research on atmospheric ozone. The ‘Dobson unit’ of measurement, ESPECIALLY prominent in the Antartic in their ‘winter time’, was named after him.
I have NEVER bought into the idea that CFCs ‘destroy the ozone layer’. If the CFC’s got that high, what about O2, that up in the ‘ozone layer’ , gets disassociatedin into O molecules, and combines with O2 to form ozone . . .?
If more UV got through the Ozone Layer, wouldn’t the UV just make more Ozone a little lower in the atmosphere?
The variation in size of the ozone hole is largely determined by the strength of strong winds flowing round Antarctica. The 2020 ozone hole grew rapidly after mid-August, and was well above average covering most of Antarctica. The 2020 ozone hole was one of the deepest with record-low ozone values. The hole pretty well just ignores the Montreal Protocol and goes on its merry way.
“The hole pretty well just ignores the Montreal Protocol and goes on its merry way.”
That’s an excellent way to put it.
It makes for cool looking charts and graphs, too.
We are told that here in Canada, somehow a thinning layer of Ozone over Antarctica is going to result in us getting sunburns.
Ah, yes, the old “It would have been much worse if we hadn’t saved you from yourself” argument.
Its the man tearing up newspapers and throwing them out of the train windows to keep the elephants away.
Whaddya meann, there aren’t any elephants? Shows how well it works, is all!
Of course, that means this 0.8 C reduced warming needs to be put into the models…..but wouldn’t that tend to show the models’ present calcs are even more in error ?
Quite the opposite, if true it would explain some of why the model predictions are hotter than measurements.
The size and depth of the ozone hole was just as big last year as it was 20 years ago. There has been inter-year variability, but no trend. So all indications are the Montreal protocol has had no effect. In that way, it is an very apt indicator for the success of Kyoto and subsequent agreements.
As somebody said at the time of its discovery, “How do we know it hasn’t always been there?”. The “scientists” simply pointed some gismo skyward back in the 1980s & observed it!!!
Except that there’s no empirical evidence that there ever was an ozone depletion that the montreal protocol is credited with stopping.
Please see
https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/03/31/list-of-posts-on-ozone-depletion/
Thanks for the comprehensive summary. Great job.
Back in the early-90s I developed a computer model in BASIC to try to estimate the surface UV flux because there there were very few actual measurements; I subsequently re-wrote the model as a spreadsheet. It was based on published data from the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer, for South 45 deg latitude. I added the geometry of Earth precession-tilt, slant-range absorption, orbital ellipticity, and a correction for assumed increased solar UV at sun spot cycle peaks.
Basically, it showed a slow drift upwards in predicted UV during the wintertime, over several years. However, notably, the summertime levels were high and constant when biological organisms experienced the levels they had evolved with. That is, when daylight hours are shortest, and the slant range and angle reduce total light intensity, the UV was minimal; when the daylight hours were long, organisms were not experiencing any increase in flux above what they had always experienced. I concluded that there was little risk to Earth biota at mid-latitudes, resulting from a slight decline in stratospheric ozone. Those individuals wearing tuxedos under the so-called ‘Ozone Hole’ never experienced the sun directly overhead, and thus the suns rays pass through a long slant range with air of normal or higher than normal ozone. Thus, I concluded that even our feathered friends were probably at no particular risk. It was mostly speculative hyperbole!
More modellers, what a nightmare.
Before claiming that the Montreal Protocol is a success, as the usual cheer leaders have been doing for the past 20 years, perhaps some real analysis is warranted.
AOA = Accumulated Ozone hole Area. The daily area under 220DU between July 1st and the 31st of December accumulated, similar to ACE. Its either an ozone hole or its not according to the NASA qualification of <220DU. If it is <220 DU, then account for it correctly, stop playing games with your carefully selected data periods of:
1 – Peak one day area.
2 – Average – 7th Sept to 13th October.
3 – Average – 21st Sept to 16th October.
2020 = 2447msqkm, the largest accumulated value in the 41 year satellite record. https://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/
Here are the top ten AOA years.
2020 = 2447 msqkm
1998 = 2433
2006 = 2377
1999 = 2372
2001 = 2359
2011 = 2298
2015 = 2272
2008 = 2186
2000 = 2131
2007 = 2090
But wait, there’s more.
Can these scientific intellectuals answer the question that is never asked. Why is it that the Antarctic polar cap minimum Ozone valve (>60S) occurs within 3 days of the Arctic Polar cap ozone minimum value. Just asking.
CFC’s, yeah right, nah.
https://eapsweb.mit.edu/news/2020/3-questions-susan-solomon-plugging-holes-ozone-layer-and-climate-policies
Thank you Ozonebust
Someone could do empirical studies with plants and varying UV levels, if that hasn’t already happened. You know, do some real science.
The study models a scenario that never happened.
However it doesn’t appear possible to calibrate the model to the real world. I think they calibrate their model to another model.
“New Modelling” = Rubbish paper. When I got to this point I stopped reading.
When a Model has been Verified and Validated then I will take notice of the study.
Regards
Climate Heretic
I was curious as to who paid all these people, at Nature under Acknowledgements I found two grants. Under Author information I found all those that worked on this project apear to be public employees. This is how research is done in the 21st century: create ‘models’ and tune until stated goal is achieved?
Just a few years ago, the ozone hole was supposed to be larger than the 1990s.
They don’t understand:
What they appear to understand is that:
How did science (and society) go so wrong?
Uni of Lancaster:
Beside the M6 motorway just as you drive south out of Cumbria and venture into the Dump Land that is= Lancashire.
The Uni itself = garish confection of angular multicoloured modern architecture, seemingly randomly dropped into otherwise pristine and lovely green fields
I repeat:
The only Good Things to come out of Lancashire are:
Careful Peta, I’m originally from Lancashire (well I was until my area became Greater Madchester).
Good things from Lancashire:
Black Pudding
Eric Morecambe
Lancashire Hotpot
Victoria Wood
Leyland Classic Buses
Ribble Valley
Clitheroe Castle
Uncle Joes Mint Balls
Lowry
Stan Laurel
Peter Kay
Les Dawson
George Formby
George Orwell
I could go on, so I will….
😀
All the good things leave lancashire…or die.
Peta,
Thanks – you almost cost me a screen – projectile laughing!
I assume you’ve already considered the beauty of Blackpool?
Auto
Eric, if you look at the detail of the ozone hole, you will notice a collar around the periphery where the ozone has thickened like a rolled down turtle neck sweater. Someone good at this sort of thing can convert the colors to Dobson units and determine if the ozone is depleted or simply just redistributed.
I’ve mentioned this on other occasions, and also that ozone is diamagnetic, i.e. pushed away from a concentrated magnetic field, whereas diatomic oxygen is reasonably paramagnetic and attracted to a magnetic field. I know the dynamics of weather is by far the stronger effect, but given that when the hole is present because of atmospheric dynamics, magnetics would act to some degree to separate O2 and O3, the first attracted to the pole, the latter pushed way.
There are a couple of ways that this could be tested. First, if there is a higher O2 content ‘in hole’ than in the average atmosphere and second, if in addition to the ozone hole, there are coincident noble gases, carbon dioxide, methane and I believe NOx “holes” – gases which are similarly diamagnetic.
The ozone concentration outside the circumpolar vortex is usually asymmetric. I suspect it is a result of localized turbulence in the vortex allowing some of the anomalously high ozone concentrations to break through and increase the ozone in the depleted area.
Personally, I think that the magnetic attraction-repulsion difference between oxygen and ozone is so small that it would be overwhelmed by winds. If you watch an animation you will see the high-concentration rings will completely encircle the South Pole, and then suddenly there will be a large ‘chunk’ missing, suggesting (at least to me) that we aren’t seeing some constant geomagnetic force acting on the oxygen/ozone.
A True Believer in Utah:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/08/watch-utah-teacher-goes-threatening-political-rant-students-not-agree-far-left-ideology/
This is the ozone hole over the last few decades. The whole article is nonsense.
Here is a more recent chart. Still don’t see much sign of the cfc ban.
Here is another amusing chart.
After giving this some though, it seems to me that the annual rate of use of CFCs is not the proper metric for comparison with annual SP ozone loss.
Because CFCs are long-lived, I think that one should plot the cumulative emissions of CFCs. It will then match up better with the area of the annual ‘hole.’
What this means is that the ozone ‘hole’ area is at a plateau. Assuming that if the CFCs are actually responsible for this seasonal weather phenomena, it will be decades before a measurable decline will be evident.
Thank you! You just saved me a lot of work. I agree that the ban doesn’t seem to be working as advertised.
The greatest extent was 2006, and today we are only 10% less than that, but the hole never got as far as Australia.
Tasmania is 42 degrees south. That’s as close to the south pole as Boston is to the north, it is a ridiculous to use Australia as an argument. ‘Oh, its in the south, somewhere, that will do’.
Come on, that’s about as scientific is MBH 98!
It could well be that UV interferes with photosynthesis, I certainly wouldn’t use this toilet paper worthy submission as evidence to the contrary!
WUWT needs to check the quality of its articles, this is a joke.
(Disclaimer, CO2 causes mild warming and is good for the planet, before you all take me for an alarmist. )
Look at the ozone hole in 2020 and the temperature of the stratosphere.
Most of the manufacturing causing CFC release is in the northern hemisphere. Very small proportion is in the southern hemisphere. Why is there a bigger hole in the southern hemisphere? Surely you’d think there’d be a bigger problem over the north pole if CFCs are a problem? Or are CFCs so heavy that they fall down to the south pole from the high northern latitudes?
Back when this was a news story I would often challenge on why convection allows the chemicals to pass the equator.
The answer was always that the CFCs were a necessary but not sufficient cause of the “hole”. It needs the right weather and ice crystals as well.
The follow up question “Why do we think the CFCs are necessary at all then?” was never addressed. Because back then we hadn’t removed the CFCs since the time we had first learnt how to measure the “hole”… so no-one knew.
It was always just another precautionary principle circular argument.
Temperature!
Hmmm. What would a plot of world CFC production 1950 – 1975 against average world temperature during the same period look like?