Ozone hole three times the size of Greenland opens over the North Pole

What!!??  The evil refrigerant gases -- CFCs  -- that eat up ozone and produce ozone holes have been banned and the result is said to be an increase in ozone and reduced ozone holes.

So where does this new hole come from?  CFCs in the air should affect ozone at both poles.  But now that we have holes at both poles it follows in Greenie logic that CFCs must be more plentiful than ever, not eliminated as Greenies claim. CFCs do appear to have been reduced by the Montreal treaty so could it be that CFCs do not affect ozone at all?

Combining the holes at both poles produces a bigger hole than  ever so ozone must be vanishing at a great rate rather than slowly increasing. Atmospheric ozone would appear to be less  plentiful than ever -- not increasing as Greenies predicted

And the Antarctic hole was at its greatest extent in 2015 -- which is hardly consistent with something that is gradually fading away.  The Greenie story is a crock


Ozone holes open over the South Pole every year. Holes at the North Pole are much, much rarer.

Scientists have detected what may be the largest hole in the ozone layer ever recorded over the North Pole.

The ozone hole covers an area roughly three times the size of Greenland, scientists from the European Space Agency (ESA) said in a statement, and could expose people living at far northern latitudes to high levels of ultraviolet radiation if it grows much larger. Fortunately, the hole looks likely to close on its own in the next few weeks, the ESA researchers said.

Holes form in the ozone layer — which is a sheet of gas in Earth's atmosphere that absorbs much of the harmful ultraviolet light emitted by the sun — every year over Antarctica due to seasonal changes in cloud cover. Ozone holes over the Arctic, however, are rarer. The last time an Arctic ozone hole opened was in 2011, and it was significantly smaller than the hole seen now, the researchers said.

"From my point of view, this is the first time you can speak about a real ozone hole in the Arctic," Martin Dameris, an atmospheric scientist at the German Aerospace Center, told Nature.

The Antarctic ozone hole opens every year due to the combination of frigid temperatures and man-made pollution. When temperatures plummet at the start of Antarctica's winter, high-altitude clouds form over the South Pole. Industrial chemical pollutants, including chlorine and bromine, trigger reactions in these clouds that eat away at the surrounding ozone gas.

The Arctic, which has more variable temperatures, doesn't usually see the same ozone-depleting conditions, the researchers said. But this year, powerful winds trapped cold air in a "polar vortex" above the Arctic.  That led to colder temperatures and more high-altitude clouds than normal. Hence, North Pole ozone-depletion began.

Fortunately, with the sun slowly getting higher over the Arctic, atmospheric temperatures are already beginning to increase, which means the conditions causing the ozone hole should soon change, the researchers said. However, if the hole continues to expand south, Arctic residents — like those living in southern Greenland — may need to apply sunscreen to prevent UV damage.

The much larger Antarctic ozone hole will remain a seasonal feature, as it has for roughly four decades, though that hole has begun shrinking in size. A 2018 assessment by the World Meteorological Organization found that the southern ozone hole has been shrinking by about 1% to 3% per decade since the year 2000, with the 2019 hole measuring smaller than it ever has since 1982. The shrinking of the southern ozone hole is thanks largely to a global ban on ozone-depleting chemicals initiated in 1987, though some key nations still do not appear to be participating. According to a 2018 investigation, factories in China still appeared to be pumping large quantities of ozone-depleting chemicals into the atmosphere.

SOURCE




That Other Travesty Of Science: The Ozone ‘Hole’

Written by Richard F. Cronin BChE, MBA, Prof. Engr.

I am a former DuPont Chemical Engineer who worked predominately in heavy industrial chemicals (now Chemours). I receive particular satisfaction in debunking the travesties of science which have  afflicted society.

It is all but impossible to obtain peer review, (aka the Buddy System),  to be published in any major technical journal.

My latest effort has addressed the bogus claims of man-made “ozone depletion”.

The ozone “hole” is really just a thinning. Ozone is produced by solar radiation at stratospheric elevations converting O2 to O3. Ozone is therefore not produced during the polar winters and is at its lowest level in the polar springtime. It recovers during the sunlit summers.

In 1958, Eugene Parker developed a theory showing how the Sun’s hot corona — by then known to be millions of degrees Fahrenheit — is so hot that it overcomes the Sun’s gravity and generates the solar wind, a stream of free protons and electrons (plasma) moving at speeds up to 1.8 million miles per hour.

A year later, the Soviet spacecraft Luna 1 detected solar wind particles in space, and in 1962 the observations were confirmed by NASA’s Mariner 2 spacecraft.

The Mariner 2 Space Probe, NASA's First Interplanetary ...
The solar wind is deflected by the Earth’s magnetic field but such protection does not extend over the  polar regions. Ozone production varies from summer to winter but ozone is ripped off continuously.

Due to the vigorous circumpolar winds (Antarctica’s polar vortex), the atmosphere above Antarctica is largely confined. Any ozone produced in mid-latitude regions does not bleed into the stratosphere over Antarctica. Therefore, the thinning of the ozone is most pronounced at the South Pole. The polar vortex of the Arctic wanders due to the different geography and topography, so mid-latitude ozone does bleed into the Arctic.

In the winter of 2019-2020 the northern polar vortex remained very stable and provided the same isolating conditions as the Antarctic. The Arctic was particularly cold, setting record low temperatures in northern Greenland.

In 1957, the British Antarctic Survey conducted balloon sampling of Antarctica’s atmosphere with a Dobson Spectrophotometer. These measurements gave the first clues that there was a seasonal thinning of the ozone layer. This was the basis for laboratory work by Molina & Rowland and their 1974 paper about the destruction of ozone by chlorine or bromine. It was just assumed that the chlorine and bromine in the Antarctic atmosphere came from chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), yet it is known that a great number of chlorine and bromine compounds are emitted from volcanoes — such as Antarctica’s Mt. Erebus as published by Science Direct’s, Elsevier. [1]

Routine monitoring of Antarctica’s ozone layer began in earnest in 1985 (J.C. Farman, et al) and continues today. The seasonal waxing and waning are well documented.

The 1974 paper by Molina and Rowland was conducted in a laboratory and no solar wind blew thru their lab hood nor did they have volcanoes nor the downdrafts of a  heavy rain storm in their lab hood observations. Molina and Rowland developed the premise of a “one dimensional diffusion model” based upon Brownian motion.

That is, Molina and Rowland stated that the CFCs, which are 1.4 to 3.7x heavier than air, just go straight up.

In fact, any CFCs released at the surface just stay down here.  Moreover, Molina and Rowland stated that the CFCs are not soluble in water so rainwater would not scrub them out of the air. Big deal. Rains bring downdrafts. CFC and several organics also adsorb on dust particles as well as aerosols.

Molina and Rowland were awarded the Nobel Prize for their pronouncement about CFCs and ozone destruction. The cash award for the Nobel Prize is approx. $900,000. The Nobel Prize can also serve as an excellent door stop or shim for a wobbly table.

Furthermore, Dr. Gordon Gribble of Dartmouth has catalogued thousands of naturally occurring coverchlorinated and brominated compounds, including CFCs emitted by volcanoes — even though it was claimed that CFCs are strictly man-made. [2]

It is known that Mt. Erebus delivers chlorinated and brominated compounds in trace amounts over Antarctica. Likewise, the volcanoes of Iceland deliver these halogenated compounds into the Arctic. These heavy compounds just drift back down although there is always a trace equilibrium presence.

The Montreal Protocol to replace CFCs was established in 1987. All nations self-report and nobody can audit anybody. All of the original Freons@R are still produced in China and sold around the world. The specific location is known from downwind sampling over the Pacific Ocean.

You can also buy any of these original refrigerants on eBay or Amazon. [3.4]

But Whoo-Hoo !! We have won the war on Chlorine and Bromine !! Now onto the war on Carbon !!

If you declare war on elements of the Periodic Table, you gonna lose.

SOURCE



Another moron effort from a Warmist

The very first sentence below shows a total inattention to the full effect of higher global temperatures.  It assumes that higher temperatures will produce drought -- which is contrary to the most basic physics.  Warmer oceans will give off more evaporation which will in turn come down as rain.  A warmer world will be a WETTER world


Timely precipitation will be essential for plants to counteract global warming

Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science

Summary:

A new Columbia Engineering study shows that increased water stress -- higher frequency of drought due to higher temperatures, is going to constrain the phenological cycle: in effect, by shutting down photosynthesis, it will generate a lower carbon uptake at the end of the season, thus contributing to increased global warming.
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FULL STORY

Photosynthesis on Earth is regulated by plant phenology -- how plant life cycles interact with the climate -- and environmental conditions, both of which changed substantially in recent decades. Unlike early-season photosynthesis which is mostly driven by warming temperatures or the onset of the wet season, late-season photosynthesis can be limited by several factors, such as plant life cycle and radiation, and its underlying mechanisms are less understood. Late-season photosynthesis on land contributes greatly to annual total carbon fixation and is sensitive to climate. Scientists generally agree that temperature limitation on late-season photosynthesis will alleviate with warming but the effects of water availability are highly uncertain.

A new Columbia Engineering study shows that increased water stress -- higher frequency of drought due to higher temperatures, is going to constrain the phenological cycle: in effect, by shutting down photosynthesis, it will generate a lower carbon uptake at the end of the season, thus contributing to increased global warming. The researchers used both remote sensing data and in-situ observations to analyze the temperature and water limitations on the end of photosynthesis date. They found that water limitation on late-season photosynthesis is regulated by both soil water and mean annual temperature. Earth system models have predicted warming and soil drying over most of the land surface by 2100, and so it is clear that water availability will become increasingly important as a limiting factor for late-season photosynthesis and carbon uptake.

"We wanted to understand what the driving factor of plant photosynthesis is during the late growing season, and how it will change in the future," says Pierre Gentine, associate professor of earth and environmental engineering and affiliated with the Earth Institute, who led the study published today in Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences. "Our study is a very good example of how advances in remote sensing technologies can be used to solve long-lasting questions like this one."

The team used both machine learning and remote sensing to generate a new dataset for mapping global plant photosynthesis. They found a contrasting spatial pattern of temperature and water limitations on photosynthesis at the end of the growing season. The threshold separating these was determined by the balance between energy availability and soil water supply. Precipitation and temperature had important yet opposite impacts on the end of the growing season photosynthesis for ecosystems at different locations: if plant photosynthesis in some areas is limited by precipitation (positive relationship with precipitation), temperature is likely to have a negative effect, and vice versa.

"We are the first to show that the balance between soil water and energy input into the ecosystem determines whether the system is limited by precipitation or by temperature," says the study's lead author Yao Zhang, a former postdoc research scientist with Gentine and now a postdoc scholar at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "As temperature limitation diminishes, more soil water is needed to support increased vegetation activity, especially during the late growing season. CMIP5 models project future warming and drying especially during late season, both of which should further expand the regions with limited water, causing large variations and potential decreases in photosynthesis."

SOURCE





The Relentless Pursuit of Doomsday Dogma Amid Coronavirus Crisis

The world is in the middle of the coronavirus crisis and economies are crashing. No one expects doomsayers to talk about climate change at times like these.

But that’s exactly what some people have done.

In their relentless pursuit to promote the doomsday agenda, doomsayers inculcate the masses with more misleading information on climate change.

Last week, Barack Obama tweeted a LA times news article criticizing the current administration and commented, “We’ve seen all too terribly the consequences of those who denied warnings of a pandemic. We can’t afford any more consequences of climate denial. All of us, especially young people, have to demand better of our government at every level and vote this fall.”

Only Obama can compare climate change with a pandemic and still get away with 340,000-plus likes. There are multiple flaws in his tweet.

First, you can’t compare apples with oranges. While the coronavirus is an active problem, the entire climate doomsday theory is hinged on forecasts about temperatures in the distant future. These forecasts come from a few hundred computer models that exaggerate the real-world scenario. Model inefficiency is a globally acknowledged fact.

Second, most of the political leaders, including Trump, did not deny the warning of a pandemic. To the contrary, it was the World Health Organization (WHO) that delayed declaring a pandemic. President Trump even criticized WHO for concealing the gravity of the situation and its misleading recommendations.

On the other hand, climate doomsayers issue empty threats and warnings about dangerous warming without actual evidence. Their only justification — computer climate models — has proved faulty time and again.

Not only are the predictions unreliable, but there is no evidence (note that word: evidence, which is actual, empirical observations, not projections by computer models) to prove that the current warming, which has been steady since the 18th century, will snowball into dangerous warming.

If anyone is denying climate change, it is a person like Obama, who refuses to acknowledge the scientifically established facts on the global slowdown in warming.

Obama is not the only one riding the pandemic wave to promote climate doomsday. Student protest leader Greta Thunberg has also used this time to promote her propaganda in innovative ways.

A complete lockdown has forced school classes to go digital. Continuing to stop students from going to classes, Greta encouraged her followers to go on a digital school strike. Greta, like Obama, keeps comparing the current crisis to the imaginary climate doomsday.

This climate crisis obsession does not stop with individuals. The negotiations in the United States Congress between Republicans and Democrats on the coronavirus stimulus were painfully prolonged when Democrats demanded their climate policies be included in the package.

The Democrats’ obsession with the climate emergency irked many senators who wanted to get the coronavirus relief funds to people quickly. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said, “Democrats won’t let us fund hospitals or save small businesses unless they get to dust off the Green New Deal.”

There is a common theme among all these climate-obsessed voices: They don’t want to miss the opportunity to propagate the climate doomsday theory and are seldom worried about the real, deadly crisis.

The coronavirus pandemic has given them the ideal platform to misuse people’s vulnerability and fear, and they continue to push climate misinformation.

SOURCE

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