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Dramatic Loss of Arctic Ozone
by Joshua S Hill
The European Space Agency, the UN'S World Meteorological Organization, and the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research are among the leading authorities reporting a record depletion of the ozone layer over the Arctic.
According to the WMO, "depletion of the ozone layer ... has reached an unprecedented level over the Arctic this spring because of the continuing presence of ozone-depleting substances..."
The ESA noted that the "Envisat satellite has measured record low levels of ozone over the Euro-Atlantic sector of the northern hemisphere during March."
While Germany's AWI noted that "over the past few days ozone-depleted air masses extended from the north pole to southern Scandinavia" lead "to higher than normal levels of ultraviolet radiation during sunny days in southern Finland."
They went on to add that "these air masses will move east over the next few days, covering parts of Russia and perhaps extend as far south as the Chinese/Russian border."
The drastic loss of ozone is a result of unusually strong winds, known as the polar vortex, which secluded the atmospheric mass over the North Pole and ensured that it did not mix with air in the mid-latitudes. As a result, low temperatures such as take place every winter in the southern hemisphere over the Antarctic occurred in the Arctic region, increasing the depletion of ozone particles.
More information on why cold weather affects ozone particles in this way can be found in my article from earlier in March, which looked at warnings from scientists at the AWI regarding the possible record depletion of ozone.
"Our measurements show that at the relevant altitudes about half of the ozone that was present above the Arctic has been destroyed over the past weeks," Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association (AWI) researcher Markus Rex said in early March. "Since the conditions leading to this unusually rapid ozone depletion continue to prevail, we expect further depletiofn to occur."
"Such massive ozone loss has so far never occurred in the northern hemisphere, which is densely populated even at high latitudes," said Rex on April 5, in light of the most recent findings. "If elevated levels of surface UV occur, they will last a few days and sun protection will be necessary on those days, especially for children," Rex added.
Reprinted with permission from Planetsave
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or why do they keep mentioning the cold air and what does it have to do with the ozone?
The hole exists, because the ozone is being forced out of the area by the cold air.
Ozone O3 is a 3 piece oxygen molecule created by a reaction of sunlight and oxygen in the atmosphere. It is always being created anywhere the sun hits the air, and destroyed by the UV light.
In the antarctic the ice is so thick that a polar vortex always forms during their long night of winter ( a month or so with no sunlight at all.) during that time the cold air pushes all the warm air out and forms almost a wall of cold.
Because the Ozone is formed by sunlight it is warm when created, so is also pushed out. It’s dark during the arctic winter so no Ozone is created there during that time so a hole forms.
Now normally because there is no land mass at the North pole, and very little inside the arctic circle, there is not normally enough ice mass to set up a polar vortex there, but this year it was unusually cold. A vortex formed and then so did an Ozone hole.
In both the arctic and the antarctic the ozone hole collapses once the sun rises again and heats the air enough to break the vortex.
There is a risk though for maybe a few weeks that this cold air mass before it breaks up does not have the ozone levels in it to guard against UV radiation in these very northern cities and towns and they could be at risk to skin cancer from the elevated UV. Not too likely that they will be out in shorts and a tshirt this soon in the year anyway.
Here’s a great article on sunspots that explains why the thinning happened this year http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/02mar_spotlesssun/
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