Interesting News Technology: The ozone hole over Antarctica’s healing

Sunday, July 3, 2016

The ozone hole over Antarctica’s healing – Gazeta Wyborcza

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Unit & # x105; the largest & # x119; larger holes ozone over Earth & # x105; observed in 2006.

One of the biggest ozone hole above the Earth observed in 2006. (NASA)

In the latest "Science" is confirmed by scientists from the US and the UK. And there were doubts about that.

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These doubts arose among that last October., the ozone hole reached a record large. Some began so I wonder if the famous Montreal Protocol - signed in 1987. International treaty obliging all countries of the world to withdraw from the use of ozone-depleting CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons - CFCs) - works at all.

Works - write in "Science" researchers . The researchers decided to measure the hole is not in October, as is usually done, but in September. They concluded that October is meteorologicznie too unstable over Antarctica and September will be more measurable.

According to the calculations, from 2000 to 2015. Ozone hole has decreased by - a trifle - 4 million sq. Km, which is the surface of equal half the surface of the United States. For more than half of this reduction corresponds to exclude the use of chlorofluorocarbons.

According to the researchers record large ozone hole in October 2015. Was caused by a volcanic eruption in Chile Calbuco. He threw it into the sky so much dust that it "planted" polar stratospheric clouds, which the CFC precipitated dangerous for ozone chlorine.

The main author of the work in "Science" is the prof. Susan Solomon of MIT, which in 1986. Discovered the relationship between the formation of the ice-altitude clouds over Antarctica and the precipitation of chlorine from CFCs.

The fact that CFCs destroy the ozone layer was first alerted as early as 1975 . in "Nature" atmospheric chemists, Frank Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina.

Exactly ten years later, three researchers from the British Services Antarctic discovered the ozone hole over Antarctica.

One of them, Dr. Jonathan Shanklin, as explained in an interview with "Election" mechanism of the appearance of holes .

- winter operates over Antarctica powerful cyclone, low-pressure system that appears there because of the polar night and cool. Cold air gets heavy and sinking begins to spin - explains the researcher. - Cyclone is a barrier for ozone filled the air flowing from the lower latitudes. At the same time due to the extreme cold in the stratosphere over the Antarctic ice clouds are forming on the surface where the chemical reaction takes place - with chlorofluorocarbons precipitates chlorine. And then, when the spring [which at the other end of the world begins in late August] returns sunlight, between molecules of chlorine and ozone photochemical reaction takes place, which destroys ozone [hardest you can see it in October]. During the summer, when the stratosphere warms layer O3 partially recovering.

Without the veil of ozone in the stratosphere, our planet would be dead. Incoming ultraviolet radiation from the sun destroys because DNA.

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