Ozone hole news

[Brian Ellis]

2003 Antarctic Ozone Hole Grows Fast, But Recovery Forecast

... Satellite measurements during late August and early Sept. show near normal ozone values on the Australian side of the continent perimeter, and that much of Antarctica was not within the boundary of the ozone hole until the last few days in August. This is usual for late August and early Sept. as the sun rises over Antarctica and triggers the accelerated ozone loss. However, during the past 1-2 weeks the ozone hole has grown more rapidly than usual. This is at least partly due to the elongated vortex allowing an increase in solar exposure to its interior, thus accelerating ozone loss. The early period of the 2003 ozone hole is in this way very similar to that observed in 2000. The ozone hole now appears to be 25 M km2 in area, 10% below the record size recorded in mid-Sept. 2000. The ozone mass deficit (a measure of the depth of the ozone hole) has reached 50 million tons, which is also 10% below the record set in mid-Sept. 2000. The size, depth and persistence of the ozone hole are expected to vary substantially from year to year and are strongly influenced by meteorological changes. As was the case in 2000 when the ozone hole was the largest on record and in 2002 when it was the smallest since 1988, a single year cannot be used to infer a general trend in the ozone hole parameters. Note that background information, earlier bulletins, yearly ozone hole summaries, and the "The Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion: 2002" are now available at the WMO ozone website given below. The Secretariat of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) distributes Bulletins providing current Antarctic ozone hole conditions during August-December each year ...
Article @ http://www.wmo.ch/web/arep/03/bulletin_2_2003.pdf
Source: World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Ozone Bulletin #2/2003, 4 September 2003

[Marshmallowman]

ahh krap...another glarey burning summer comming up..

I got my hopes up last year that it was improving faster than predicted...

Where are all those A-holes from 5 years back who said it was all BS, I want tie them up and leave them in the middle of the antarctic..

[Jon P. Inghram]

Yeah, look at how high the death rate from skin cancer is for people who operate in bases on Antartica. And the poor penguins, they should all be extinct now due to the horrific amounts of radiation.

[GNEP]

How many people do you know that work in the Antarctic wearing a t-shirt and shorts?

I think you will find that the rate of skin cancer in Australia (where people who aren't careful do where tshirts and shorts is much higher than for comparable climates away from the ozone hole.

[Brian Ellis]

Originally posted by Jon P. Inghram
Yeah, look at how high the death rate from skin cancer is for people who operate in bases on Antartica. And the poor penguins, they should all be extinct now due to the horrific amounts of radiation.

Actually, all the species of penguins are in decline for a variety of reasons, climate change, diminishing food sources (the UV radiations is diminishing plankton at the start of the food chain), ENSO. However, one minor cause is almost funny. As you know, penguins brood their eggs under a fold of their body above their legs. With the King Penguins, when a helicopter overflies them, they follow it with their eyes until they fall over, sometimes causing the egg to fall onto the ice and crack!

[Brian R.]

Originally posted by Marshmallowman
ahh krap...another glarey burning summer comming up..

I got my hopes up last year that it was improving faster than predicted...

Where are all those A-holes from 5 years back who said it was all BS, I want tie them up and leave them in the middle of the antarctic..

Gurm should be here any minute...

[Dr Mordrid]

Originally posted by Brian Ellis
However, one minor cause is almost funny. As you know, penguins brood their eggs under a fold of their body above their legs. With the King Penguins, when a helicopter overflies them, they follow it with their eyes until they fall over, sometimes causing the egg to fall onto the ice and crack!

Sounds like domestic turkeys who look up during rainstorms, often drowning when they forget to put their heads back down

Yes, it really happens. It's normal on our local turkey farms to round 'em up and get them into the coops before a rainstorm just for this reason.

Dr. Mordrid

[Nowhere]

A Mexican newspaper reports that bored Royal Air Force pilots stationed on the Falkland Islands have devised what they consider a marvelous new game. Noting that the local penguins are fascinated by airplanes, the pilots search out a beach where the birds are gathered and fly slowly along it at the water's edge. Perhaps ten thousand penguins turn their heads in unison watching the planes go by, and when the pilots turn around and fly back, the birds turn their heads in the opposite direction, like spectators at a slow-motion tennis match. Then, the paper reports, 'The pilots fly out to sea and directly to the penguin colony and overfly it. Heads go up, up, up, and ten thousand penguins fall over gently onto their backs

I wonder how the ones from Alternative Lifestiles would comment on this one. Apparently stability and penguin don't go in couple

[Gurm]

It still is krap, MarshmallowMan.

Just 'cuz you can SOMETIMES take a picture of it (note that it STILL disappears for most of the year, wonder where it's gone - having a vacation on another planet or taking a long nap maybe?) and it's a bit bigger than the LAST time you could take a picture of it (a year or more ago) doesn't prove anything.

- Gurm

[Brian Ellis]

I'll tell you where it's gone, Gurm: right over your head, so that you are getting the increased UV radiation.

The actual so-called Antarctic ozone hole occurs ONLY during essentially September to October because of a combination of a weather feature called the polar vortex and the austral sunrise. The ozone deficit is phenomenal, both in terms of the mass and the thickness. The global average thickness is ~400 Dobson Units: in the "hole" it drops to a few tens of DU, at its worst. When the vortex collapses, the ozone depleting chemicals, mostly elemental chlorine and bromine derived from CFCs, halons, solvents and pesticides, after photolytic decomposition in the stratosphere, start to spread radially outwards. A similar phenomenon on a much smaller scale occurs over the Arctic in March/April, the difference being due to the temperature difference between the landmass in the south and the seamass in the North.

The average ozone depletion in the Northern mid-latitudes since 1970 is currently ~13%, rising annually by ~0.5% and will continue rising until ~2045 by which time it may stabilise.

Ozone depletion is probably one of the most heavily researched and, over the last few years, understood global phenomena. We who have worked in the field (in my case, since 1988) have a very good understanding of what happens and much paper and ink has been used explaining it to laymen and scientists alike. Of course, since you appear to have scientific knowledge about ozone depletion that has escaped the attention of the thousands of world-renowned scientists, including three laureates of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, please write a scientific paper on the subject. I'm sure your views will be well received with the attention it deserves and may get you a Nobel Prize, as well!

[Umfriend]

Ouch

[Gurm]

*shrug*

Scientists write about lots of stuff.

They write about the general theory of evolution, despite the fact that it has been shown to be flawed and false they continue to write.

The fact that a lot of supposedly smart people write about something doesn't make it true. It's amazing the amount of ass-covering that goes on.

Does ozone deplete? Yep. Absolutely.

Are/were CFC's a big cause? Nope, not at all. I could spray GLADE all I want for 1000 years and it wouldn't touch the output of a single tractor trailer rig for ozone-depletiveness.

I'm not saying the phenomenon isn't real. I'm saying that it's not what it's hyped to be. In response to MarshmallowMan's comment about "where are all the people who said it was krap", I responded that the "popularly perceived notion of a giant ozone hole that's getting bigger and bigger" quite certainly IS 'krap'.

- Gurm

[Brian Ellis]

OK, Gurm, put your money where your mouth is.

Please write a scientific paper showing conclusively why ozone depletion is not caused by CFCs but by tractor trailer rigs. If you do, you will certainly have it published in Nature and you will be showered with honours and cash rewards to continue your research. If you send it to me, I will personally see that it is brought to the attention of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol and the United Nations Environment Programme Ozone Secretariat in Nairobi, who will breathe a huge sigh of collective relief -- and I'll be the first to join them, even if I've wasted 15 years of my life.

I will agree with you that if you go to your local convenience store and buy as much Glade as you can, you won't touch the ozone layer (climate change may be another story). But if you had done so before 1978, that would have been another story. Just to put it into perspective, five pre-1978 cans of Glade would have caused depletion equivalent to the size of a football pitch of the total ozone column for several years [assumption: each can contained 200 g of CFC-12 or a CFC-11/12 mixture].

Please, can you give me a time scale for your publication?

[Gurm]

Brian,

I'm sorry, that's just bullshit. I refuse to buy it. One can of 1970's aerosol deodorant rips a football-field-sized hole in the ozone? If that were true, based on the number of cans of such aerosol sold yearly in the 1970's, we just wouldn't have an ozone layer at all any more.

Seriously. Do some math here!

- Gurm

[Brian Ellis]

CK