Arctic ozone levels in never-before-seen plunge
16 April BBC
The ozone layer has seen unprecedented damage in the Arctic this
winter due to cold weather in the upper atmosphere. By the end of March,
40% of the ozone in the stratosphere had been destroyed, against a
previous record of 30%.
The ozone layer protects against skin cancer, but the gas is
destroyed by reactions with industrial chemicals.
These chemicals are restricted by the UN's Montreal Protocol, but
they last so long in the atmosphere that damage is expected to continue
for decades."The Montreal Protocol actually works, and the amount of
ozone-depleting gases is on the way down, but quite slowly," said Geir
Braathen, a senior scientist with the World Meteorological Organization
(WMO), which co-ordinates ozone data globally."In the meantime, we have
some winters that get much colder than before and also the cold periods
last longer, into the spring," he told BBC News."So it's really a
combination of the gases still there and low temperatures and then
sunshine, and then you get ozone loss."
Dr Braathen was one of a number of scientists presenting the findings
at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) annual meeting in Vienna.
'Sun screen' The destructive reactions are promoted by cold
conditions (below -78C) in the stratosphere.
While this is an annual occurrence in the Antarctic, where the annual
depletion has garnered the term "ozone hole", the Arctic picture is less
clear, as here the stratospheric weather is less predictable.This
winter, while the Arctic was unusually warm at ground level,
temperatures 15-20km above the Earth's surface plummeted and stayed low.
"The low temperatures were not that different from some other years,
but extended much further into March and April - in fact it's still
going on now," said Farahnaz Khosrawi, an ozone specialist at the
Meteorological Institute at Stockholm University, Sweden.Another, Dr
Florence Goutail from the French National Centre for Scientific Research
(CNRS), put the 2010/11 winter in context."Usually in cold winters we
observe that about 25% of the ozone disappears, but this winter was
really a record - 40% of the column has disappeared," she said.
The longer and colder Antarctic winters often see 55% of the ozone
depleted.
However, this has hardly any impact on human health, as the region is
largely uninhabited - only the southern tip of South America sometimes
comes under the ozone hole.But in the Arctic, the situation is
different. Over the last month, severe ozone depletion has been seen
over Scandinavia, Greenland, and parts of Canada and Russia.
The WMO is advising people in Scandinavian countries and Greenland to
look out for information on daily conditions in order to prevent any
damage to their health.
Loss of ozone allows more of the Sun's harmful ultraviolet-B rays to
penetrate through the atmosphere. This has been linked to increased
rates of skin cancer, cataracts and immune system damage.
"With no ozone layer, you would have 70 times more UV than we do now
- so you can say the ozone layer is a sunscreen of factor 70," said Dr
Braathen.
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