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Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Ozone depletion and global warming

There are five areas of linkage between ozone depletion and global warming:
Radiative forcing from various greenhouse gases and other sources.
  • The same CO2 radiative forcing that produces global warming is expected to cool the stratosphere.[ This cooling, in turn, is expected to produce a relative increase in ozone (O3) depletion in polar area and the frequency of ozone holes.
  • Conversely, ozone depletion represents a radiative forcing of the climate system. There are two opposing effects: Reduced ozone causes the stratosphere to absorb less solar radiation, thus cooling the stratosphere while warming the troposphere; the resulting colder stratosphere emits less long-wave radiation downward, thus cooling the troposphere. Overall, the cooling dominates; the IPCC concludes that "observed stratospheric O3 losses over the past two decades have caused a negative forcing of the surface-troposphere system" of about −0.15 ± 0.10 watts per square meter (W/m²).
  • One of the strongest predictions of the greenhouse effect is that the stratosphere will cool. Although this cooling has been observed, it is not trivial to separate the effects of changes in the concentration of greenhouse gases and ozone depletion since both will lead to cooling. However, this can be done by numerical stratospheric modeling. Results from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory show that above 20 km (12.4 miles), the greenhouse gases dominate the cooling.
  • Ozone depleting chemicals are also greenhouse gases. The increases in concentrations of these chemicals have produced 0.34 ± 0.03 W/m² of radiative forcing, corresponding to about 14% of the total radiative forcing from increases in the concentrations of well-mixed greenhouse gases.
  • The long term modeling of the process, its measurement, study, design of theories and testing take decades to document, gain wide acceptance, and ultimately become the dominant paradigm. Several theories about the destruction of ozone were hypothesized in the 1980s, published in the late 1990s, and are currently being proven. Dr Drew Schindell, and Dr Paul Newman, NASA Goddard, proposed a theory in the late 1990s, using a SGI Origin 2000 supercomputer, that modeled ozone destruction, accounted for 78% of the ozone destroyed. Further refinement of that model accounted for 89% of the ozone destroyed, but pushed back the estimated recovery of the ozone hole from 75 years to 150 years. (An important part of that model is the lack of stratospheric flight due to depletion of fossil fuels.)

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