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Antartic Ozone Hole Healed by 2050-ish.

  • 18-09-2002 10:04pm
    #1
    mike65
    Closed Accounts Posts: 88,972 ✭✭✭✭


    Good news for sunbathers at the south pole, the ozone layer should be repaired, assuming the current rate of healing continues by the second half of the century. That makes me feel kind of warm inside...:)

    http://uk.news.yahoo.com/020918/80/d9u6u.html

    Mike.


Comments

  • #2
    Typedef
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,564 ✭✭✭Typedef


    I hope you are right.

    The nasty part about CFC and HCFC and their ilk is that the compounds themselves last in the asmosphere for between 10 and 120 years and break down very slowley indeed.

    http://www.afeas.org/greenhouse_gases.html

    Ostensibly you have a good point, but the main culprit to fixing the ozone layer is the CFC's still being produced which have a long lifespan and halons still being produced which are slowing the breakdown of ozone damaging compounds.
    Despite the very low concentrations of halon-1211, the researchers have determined that continued increases of this gas are slowing the collective decline of ozone-depleting chemicals in the atmosphere more than any other persistent man-made gas. Halons have a significant influence on stratospheric ozone because they contain bromine, which is about 50 times more efficient at destroying ozone than the chlorine released by CFCs. Considering this enhanced efficiency, all halons account for about 10-15% of the ozone-depleting potential of today’s atmosphere.

    http://www.cmdl.noaa.gov/hats/publictn/smnature99.html

    So with the decline of the CFC and the chlorine damaging elements released in it's breakdown comes Halons and the much more ozone damaging ozone substance bromine, which breaks down ozone much more effectively than chlorine.

    Worse still third world countries continue to produce CFCs.

    I hope the hole is healing itself, because people on the Southern tip of South America are getting bombarded with extremely high amounts of UV-A and UV-B (UV-B is nasty) and this is causing extremely high incidents of skin cancer. This was highlighted in NewsWeek recently.


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