Ozone Loss Hits Us Where We Live

Abstract

The news about Earth's ozone layer just keeps getting worse. Three weeks ago, NASA researchers reported that the ozone hole over the Antarctic hit a record depth this year. Now comes the United Nations Environment Program, together with the World Meteorological Organization, with an even more distressing assessment of the state of the ozone layer. For the first time, the 80-member UN panel said, measurements show the ozone shield is eroding over temperate latitudes in summer, exposing crops and people to a larger dose of ultraviolet light just when they are most vulnerable. For a small group of atmospheric modelers, though, the bad news is bittersweet. Four months ago researchers predicted summertime ozone losses of just the magnitude the UN panel has now reported: about 3% over the past decade for northern temperate latitudes. Ozone modelers are encouraged by the agreement, particularly because other models are now yielding the same result. The modeling effort was spurred by earlier measurements showing a serious erosion of ozone at midlatitudes, mainly in winter. In 1988, an analysis of data collected from the ground showed that ozone levels at the latitude of the US were dropping by about 1% to 3% per decade; lastmore » April, an analysis of measurements from the satellite-borne Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer boosted that figure to between 4% and 5%. Those findings raised the question: What mechanisms could be driving the midlatitude losses The fact that the losses seemed to be concentrated in winter suggested one possibility. The winter ozone losses at the poles are driven by chemical reactions taking place on the surface of ice crystals in polar stratospheric clouds. Such clouds don't form at temperate latitudes. But some researchers suggested that masses of air already depleted in ozone or enriched in reactive chlorine by the chemistry in the polar clouds might be escaping to temperate latitudes during the winter.« less