Thursday, December 29, 2011

New Paper: Cold Arctic winters becoming colder, resulting in large ozone hole


Paper published today notes near-complete loss of ozone over the Arctic due to one of the coldest stratospheric winters on record from 2010-2011. No mention of the now-inconvenient link to man-made chlorofluorocarbon emissions.  

GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 38, L24814, 5 PP., 2011
doi:10.1029/2011GL049784
Key Points
  • Large losses of Arctic stratospheric ozone were observed during winter 2010/11
  • A further cooling of 1K would have resulted in locally near-complete ozone loss
  • A 1K cooling can counterbalance a 10% reduction in halogens
B.-M. Sinnhuber
Institute for Meteorology and Climate Research, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology,, Karlsruhe,, Germany
G. Stiller
Institute for Meteorology and Climate Research, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology,, Karlsruhe,, Germany
R. Ruhnke
Institute for Meteorology and Climate Research, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology,, Karlsruhe,, Germany
T. von Clarmann
Institute for Meteorology and Climate Research, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology,, Karlsruhe,, Germany
S. Kellmann
Institute for Meteorology and Climate Research, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology,, Karlsruhe,, Germany
J. Aschmann
Institute of Environmental Physics, University of Bremen,, Bremen,, Germany
The Arctic stratospheric winter of 2010/2011 was one of the coldest on record with a large loss of stratospheric ozone. Observations of temperature, ozone, nitric acid, water vapor, nitrous oxide, chlorine nitrate and chlorine monoxide from the Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding (MIPAS) onboard ENVISAT are compared to calculations with a chemical transport model (CTM). There is overall excellent agreement between the model calculations and MIPAS observations, indicating that the processes of denitrification, chlorine activation and catalytic ozone depletion are sufficiently well represented. Polar vortex integrated ozone loss reaches 120 Dobson Units (DU) by early April 2011. Sensitivity calculations with the CTM give an additional ozone loss of about 25 DU at the end of the winter for a further cooling of the stratosphere by 1 K, showing locally near-complete ozone depletion (remaining ozone <200 ppbv) over a large vertical extent from 16 to 19 km altitude. In the CTM a 1 K cooling approximately counteracts a 10% reduction in stratospheric halogen loading, a halogen reduction that is expected to occur in about 13 years from now. These results indicate that severe ozone depletion like in 2010/2011 or even worse could appear for cold Arctic winters over the next decades if the observed tendency for cold Arctic winters to become colder continues into the future.

3 comments:

  1. C'mon, on the basis of just this one paper we are supposed to believeit the ozone hole is not caused by humans?
    Unless western governments save voters by creating a large green beaurocracy, spend billions of tax dollars on this climate threat and issue a concensus that the ozone hole is man made, the media won't be able to scare...er...properly inform their audience of this climate threat.
    Sure the chlorofluorocarbons scare didn't quite pan out...so the only other logical cause for the onzone hole has to be those falling MAN MADE space balls.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hugh,

    on the basis of one paper the loons believed that the ozone hole was caused by CFC's!! It isn't just this ONE paper opverturning this idea. It is the sum total of the work that shows no correlation between CFC's and the ozone hole over the last 60 years and a lesser ability for CFC's to enhance the destruction of ozone than originally thought. Then there is the issue that we now know that chlorine compunds occur naturally and are boosted into the strat through natural processes!! In sum, the real work of scientists is overturning the bogus extremist views!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. ONE CAN HAVE ALL THE STUDIES IN THE WORLD BUT THIS IS BULLSHIT ALL OVER AGAIN... I STILL HAVE COMMON SENSE THAT THE SUN IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS
    SO CALLED COLDEST YEARS.. ARE NOT WE AT THE END
    OF AN ICE AGE, GO FIGURE... I THINK GOD,S PLAN
    IS NOT OURS.. HE CREATED THIS PLANET LET,S NOT
    PUT STUPID SCIENCE INTO THIS...PRAY HOPE AND DON,T
    WORRY... THIS PLANET HAS SURVIED TETONIC PLATES MOVEMENT,MASS HURRICANES, EARTHQUAQES AND FLOODS,
    DESERTS AND NOW WE ARE SUPPOSED TO SOLVE THE CAUSE. I AM SORRY BUT I DON,T BELIEVE IN BOGUS
    SCIENCE...

    ReplyDelete