dissident wrote:There is only a full ozone hole over the southern pole. In the northern hemisphere the stratospheric polar vortex is too disturbed (by Rossby waves, which have a larger amplitude due to the differences in topography between the two hemispheres) for the vortex interior to be fully isolated from middle latitude air. So even though there is chlorine activation on polar stratospheric cloud particles the springtime reduction is nowhere near as large as in the southern hemisphere. The Rossby wave interaction with the large scale circulation also has the effect of producing more dynamical heating in the northern hemisphere winter so that stratospheric temperatures are higher. So the infrared "window" is more opaque in the northern hemisphere. Any tropospheric cooling effect associated with stratospheric ozone loss is tiny to begin with and the relatively small ozone losses in the northern hemisphere makes it basically irrelevant in the face of other driving factors for Arctic sea ice loss: warm ocean currents and warmer temperatures produce by baroclinic eddy heat flux from the tropics.
Based on chemistry climate model simulations (e.g. CCMVal) the southern hemisphere ozone hole will not go away completely even by 2070. But at least the middle latitude incidence of low ozone events will be eliminated sparing us from excessive UV exposure.
And the Mid Latitude is where El Nino is.
El Niño events are becoming more frequent and severe.
The Australia/SoCal/Az droughts do not go away.