Ozone "hole" in the Arctic now too

So a fat lot of good the Greenie bans on freon etc. have done. We now have at least double the "hole" we used to have. And even more amusing is that they are blaming it all on COOLING. I sometimes suspect that Greenies can't see the nose in front of their face.

Tom Nelson read the "New Scientist" account of the matter and noted this amazing admission: "The hole was similar in size to those seen in Antarctica in the 1980s. The Antarctic hole has continued to grow since then, and is far larger today."

A great Greenie triumph has turned to dust



SCIENTISTS have discovered another hole in the ozone layer - this time it's in the Arctic. "Unprecedented depletion" of ozone was recorded above the Arctic, comparable to the size of the ozone hole above the Antarctic for the first time on record.

The hole in the ozone in the Antarctic was caused by human produced chemicals and unusually long winters. The extremely cold conditions trigger a chemical reaction that converts atmospheric chlorine from human-produced chemicals into ozone destroying forms.

The Arctic is usually less affected by ozone loss because it is considerably warmer than the Antarctic. But researchers found that this year the Arctic cold snap lasted more than 30 days longer than any previously studied winter [Global cooling?], causing the rare ozone depletion.

"Day-to-day temperatures in the 2010-11 Arctic winter did not reach lower values than in previous cold Arctic winters," said lead author Gloria Manney of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

"The difference from previous winters is that temperatures were low enough to produce ozone-destroying forms of chlorine for a much longer time. This implies that if winter Arctic stratospheric temperatures drop just slightly in the future, for example as a result of climate change, then severe Arctic ozone loss may occur more frequently."

Further studies are needed to determine what factors caused the cold period to last so long.

However Ms Manney said that without the 1989 Montreal Protocol - an international treaty limiting production of ozone-depleting substances - chlorine levels already would be so high that an Arctic ozone hole would form every spring. [A statement of pure faith]

The long atmospheric lifetimes of ozone-depleting chemicals already in the atmosphere mean that Antarctic ozone holes, and the possibility of future severe Arctic ozone loss, will continue for decades.

"Our ability to quantify polar ozone loss and associated processes will be reduced in the future when NASA's Aura and CALIPSO spacecraft, whose trace gas and cloud measurements were central to this study, reach the end of their operational lifetimes," said Ms Manney. "It is imperative that this capability be maintained if we are to reliably predict future ozone loss in a changing climate."

SOURCE