Everything I Know Is Wrong: Solar Flare Blamed for Arctic Ozone Loss

Everything I Know Is Wrong: Solar Flare Blamed for Arctic Ozone Loss: "March 01, 2005

Solar Flare Blamed for Arctic Ozone Loss



'Scientists,' as the press almost universally labels anonymous theoreticians, have discovered that the 60% reduction in Arctic ozone was mostly due to the largest solar flares ever recorded.



Sun's Temper Blamed for Arctic Ozone Loss

Charged particles from the storms triggered chemical reactions that increased the formation of extra nitrogen in the upper stratosphere, some 20 miles up. Nitrogen levels climbed to their highest in at least two decades.



A massive low-pressure system that confines air over the Arctic then conspired to deplete ozone.



Upper-atmosphere winds associated with the system, called the polar stratospheric vortex, sped up in February and March of 2004 to the fastest speeds ever recorded, the new study found. The spinning vortex allowed nitrogen gas to sink from the high stratosphere, some 20 miles up, to lower altitudes.



The nitrogen gas is known to destroy ozone.



'This decline was completely unexpected,' said Cora Randall, a physicist at the University of Colorado, Boulder who led the study. 'The findings point out a critical need to better understand the processes occurring in the ozone layer.'



Aaaugh! Even though they admit to complete surprise over the results of these completely natural phenomena in the Northern Hemisphere, they purport to know the exact cause of a similar thinning of the ozone layer in the Southern Hemisphere.



The upper-level ozone layer has thinned dramatically in the Southern Hemisphere in recent decades, creating a dangerous hole through which UV rays stream. The decline is due largely to man-made chlorofluorocarbons released into the atmosphere.



If the reader is not confused enough by one flip in logic, fear not--they flop right back again.



The new study suggests a better understanding is needed of how the Sun itself alters the ozone layer.



'No one predicted the dramatic loss of ozone in the upper stratosphere of the Northern Hemisphere in the spring of 2004,' Randall said. 'That we can still be surprised illustrates the difficulties in separating atmospheric effects due to natural and human-induced causes.'



Advice to scientists: When you don't know say, 'I don't know.'"