Peak Oil News and Message Boards

peeker01 wrote:ever wonder what happened to the ozone hole controversy? watch this video and you
will find out. 50 billion spent on cfc changeover, and 2006 was the biggest hole to date.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taTzqRHNIEc

The record-breaking Arctic ozone “hole” and global warming
According to research published in the journal Nature this week, the largest ozone “hole” on record above the Arctic opened up last winter, exposing residents of the Far North to high doses of harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation, which can cause skin cancer and cataracts. The area of severe ozone loss extended southward from the Arctic to cover populated areas in northern Russia, Greenland and Norway....

the observation of an Arctic ozone hole – which, while smaller than the Antarctic ozone hole, was comparable to it in terms of the amount of ozone lost – is surprising, and demonstrates that human actions can have unforeseen ripple effects for many years.

In the Arctic, the stratosphere – which is the layer of atmosphere above the troposphere, where most weather occurs – tends to be too mild for ozone depletion to progress to the same extent that it does during the Antarctic winter.

However, something odd happened during the winter of 2010-2011, according to the new study. The period of extreme cold in the upper atmosphere lasted more than a month longer than during any previously studied Arctic winter. The key reason for this was an unusually strong polar vortex, which is a cyclonic circulation of air in the upper levels of the atmosphere. Typically, the polar vortex is weaker in the Arctic than it is in the Antarctic.

“What was different about this year was that the temperatures were low enough to generate ozone-depleting forms of chlorine for a much longer period of time,” said study coauthor and University of Toronto physicist Kaley Walker in a press release.

Although the precise causes of the unusually cold stratosphere and extreme ozone depletion last winter are unclear, global warming is one factor that may be involved.

In the Atlantic sector the large-scale atmospheric response generally resembles the internal mode of atmospheric variability, the NAO/AO, the interaction between Arctic sea ice and the overlying atmosphere being governed by a negative feedback mechanism. In the Pacific sector sea ice anomalies excite large-scale Rossby wave trains with the sea ice–atmosphere interaction being governed by a positive feedback mechanism. The response of the climate in remote areas has been demonstrated to be controlled by linear dynamics with respect to the size of the forcing but nonlinear mechanisms with respect to the forcing's direction. These distinct responses help define the specific geographic distribution of resulting anomalies in surface weather conditions such as air temperature and precipitation regimes, and storm track activity.

he loss of Arctic sea ice is greatest in summer and fall, yet the response of the net surface energy budget over the Arctic Ocean is largest in winter. Air temperature and precipitation responses also maximize in winter, both over the Arctic Ocean and over the adjacent high-latitude continents. Snow depths increase over Siberia and northern Canada because of the enhanced winter precipitation. Atmospheric warming over the high-latitude continents is mainly confined to the boundary layer (below 850 hPa) and to regions with a strong low-level temperature inversion. Enhanced warm air advection by submonthly transient motions is the primary mechanism for the terrestrial warming. A significant large-scale atmospheric circulation response is found during winter, with a baroclinic (equivalent barotropic) vertical structure over the Arctic in November–December (January–March). This response resembles the negative phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation in February only. Comparison with the fully coupled model reveals that Arctic sea ice loss accounts for most of the seasonal, spatial, and vertical structure of the high-latitude warming response to greenhouse gas forcing at the end of the twenty-first century.

Weather "freakish" for remainder of 2011 due to massive global warming

The melting Arctic is a ticking time bomb for the Earth’s climate – and thanks to the world’s failure to reduce greenhouse-gas pollution, the fuse has already been lit -- with scientists also warning that a warmer Arctic will produce more dangerous and “freakish” weather worldwide in 2011 and 2012.