NASA Discovers Northern Arctic Ozone Loss

Left: Earth's Ozone levels in mid-March 2011. Chromatic and grey colours represent same small ozone amounts. Right: Dim blue and black colours represent very walloping amounts of Cl monoxide, ozone destroying chemicals. [Photo: National Aeronautics and Space Administration/JPL-Caltech]

Scientists have discovered an unprecedented depletion of the Earth's ozone layer in the Northern Arctic region. A NASA-led study released on October 2 in the journal Nature reports that a loss of ozone similar to the one and only found in the Antarctic has begun to develop due to a prolonged period of under temperatures.

The Ozone bed is the stratosphere, extending from about 10 to 20 miles (15 to 35 kilometers) above the aboveground of the Earth. Ozone is a molecule made up of three-oxygen-atoms that occupy 97 to 99-pct of the Sun's ultraviolet rays. The Ozonosphere suffers some amount of impairment every winter, As the cold temperatures cause ozone-destroying forms Cl to make up converted from human-produced chemicals.

"The departure from previous winters is that temperatures were low plenty to produce ozone-destroying forms of chlorine for a untold thirster time," said tether author of the study Gloria Manney, of NASA's Jet Actuation Research lab, in a press release. "This implies that if winter Frigid stratospheric temperatures drop just somewhat in the future, for example as a ensue of climate transfer, past severe Arctic ozone deprivation may occur more frequently."

In the study, the scientists found that common cold periods in the Polar lasted for 30 years longer than they did in a antecedently deliberate winter. Scientists from 19 institutions in Nina from Carolina countries investigated the 2011 Arctic ozone loss that occurred last wintertime and spring. The study included daily atmospheric observations from NASA's Gloriol and CALIPSO spacecraft, Ozone measurements with instrumented balloons, and meteorological data and atmospherical models.

The total loss of Ozone in the Arctic was ended double the typical amount in the Antarctic, but the expanse of loss was 40% smaller. Ozone depletion occurs in an atmospheric cyclone system famed atomic number 3 an Glacial polar vortex. Whereas the Antarctic vortex is larger and longer-lived, the northern vortex is littler and shorter, but it is also mobile and often moves over densely populated regions, possibly endangering humans to direct UV photo.

[NASA Super C Propulsion Laboratory]