The ozone hole above Antarctica has grown to three times the size of Brazil
The ozone hole above Antarctica has grown to three times the size of Brazil
It's one of the biggest ozone holes on record — but not necessarily cause for alarm.
I thought the ozone hole was supposed to be shrinking?
China.
We show that emissions from eastern mainland China are 7.0 ± 3.0 (±1 standard deviation) gigagrams per year higher in 2014–2017 than in 2008–2012, and that the increase in emissions arises primarily around the northeastern provinces of Shandong and Hebei. This increase accounts for a substantial fraction (at least 40 to 60 per cent) of the global rise in CFC-11 emissions. We find no evidence for a significant increase in CFC-11 emissions from any other eastern Asian countries or other regions of the world where there are available data for the detection of regional emissions.
The hole is healing, it isn't healed. It no longer poses a threat to most populations, but it ebbs and flows. Estimates for total healing (pre-1980 levels) are 2040.
I thought it was gone
It is, but it ebbs and flows over time, with the seasons. Lots of natural processes can interact with the ozone levels. It should be back to 1980 levels by 2040.
For Pete's sake. Read the damn article.
One possible reason for the higher-than-normal growth is the Hunga Tonga volcanic eruption in January 2022, which introduced massive quantities of water vapor into the air. “The water vapor could have led to the heightened formation of polar stratospheric clouds, where chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) can react and accelerate ozone depletion," said Inness.
China did increase CFCs... in the past. This is one of the reasons why the hole in the ozone is bad. There are already natural processes that can affect it, we don't want to be piling on.
Wait I thought we fixed that ages ago?!
Yes, it usually doesn't pose a danger anymore. But it's a natural process. It took time to damage it, it takes time for it to heal. It will close again in 2040 (back to 1980 levels of ozone)
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Observations from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite indicate the ozone hole reached approximately 10 million square miles (26 million square kilometers) in area on Sept. 16, 2023 — making it one of the largest seasonal holes ever observed.
Ozone is a naturally occurring gas, and there's a layer of it in the stratosphere that protects us from the sun's ultraviolet, or UV, rays.
The ozone hole still grows and shrinks seasonally, however, due to temperature changes and wind conditions in the stratosphere, reaching a maximum between mid-September and mid-October.
One possible reason for the higher-than-normal growth is the Hunga Tonga volcanic eruption in January 2022, which introduced massive quantities of water vapor into the air.
“The water vapor could have led to the heightened formation of polar stratospheric clouds, where chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) can react and accelerate ozone depletion," said Inness.
"Based on the Montreal Protocol and the decrease of anthropogenic ozone-depleting substances, scientists currently predict that the global ozone layer will reach its normal state again by around 2050," said Claus Zehner, ESA's mission manager for Copernicus Sentinel-5P.
The original article contains 340 words, the summary contains 180 words. Saved 47%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
How many capybara is that?
Brazil
- Area: 8,515,767 km² (3,287,956 sq mi)
- (sauce)
Capybara
- Adult capybaras grow to 106 to 134 cm
- (sauce)
Taking the average for length (120 cm). The width of a capybara is surprisingly absent from the internet, so I had to improvise by counting pixels:
Finding a clean top-down photo was also surprisingly difficult, but I chose this one because it's laying fairly straight, and there's a visible prominence of its hip bone and spine. I don't want to count fur-fluff in the width, so multiplying the hip to spine count by two gets us a hip-to-hip count of 56 pixels, which is 0.209% of its 268 pixel length. Multiplying wiki's length average by 0.209 gets us a width of: 25.08 cm, x 120 cm gives us an area of 3,009.6 cm² (3.24 sq ft), or to make our units the same, 0.030096 km²
8,515,767 km² (Brazil) / 0.030096 km² (capybara) = 282,953,448.96 capybaras per Brazil
x 3 = 848,860,346.88 capybaras per 1 antarctic ozone hole!
you're late by alot of years