Robert Duncan
Friday, October 7, 2011
2:57 P.M.
A study released on the second of October has reported that the largest hole in the Arctic ozone layer on date has occurred this past winter. This hole is reported to have been caused by the same chemical reactions that cause the hole in the Antarctic ozone layer. These processes are aided in part by the cold temperatures of the poles, and the cold period in the northernmost parts of the world was fairly long, continuing from December of last year to March of this year. The livescience article that I referenced spoke of a contributing factor called “Polar Vortex” which works to cause the conversion of relatively harmless gases into gases that can destroy ozone. This process tends to happen at both poles. However, the reaction at the South Pole has always been significantly more dramatic. There is also a significant contribution to the destruction of ozone by human-produced Chlorofluorocarbons, which is a type of aerosol.
The governments of the UN have known of the dangers of using CFCs for years, and there has been a treaty adopted by the participating nations that aims to eventually phase out the production of CFC products completely, but this is not expected to occur for decades to come. The biggest sociological issue is that now there are populations of people that have been affected by the increased UV radiation coming through the Arctic hole in the ozone. The hole this past winter exposed most of Greenland to high levels of UV radiation, as well as a wide area in eastern Russia. The reach of the hole this year could be used to plot the expected holes in the future. These projections state that in the future, most of Canada, Russia, Europe and parts of central Asia could be affected by a similar ozone hole. The UN needs to regulate the production of CFCs much tighter if we can hope to prevent the exposure of millions of people to the dangerous levels of UV radiation that they would encounter in these holes.
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