Ozone Hole and Air Currents Creating Dilemmas for Scientists

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"Our research indicates that trying to artificially cool off the planet could have perilous side effects. While climate change is a major threat, more research is required before society attempts global geoengineering solutions."

Thus spoke Simone Tilmes of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) with regards to new conclusions reached by atmospheric scientists at NCAR/.

Their conclusions have been reached at precisely the same time that atmospheric scientists at the University of Colorado at Boulder, NOAA, and NASA have concluded that "If the successful control of ozone-depleting substances allows for a full recovery of the ozone hole over Antarctica, we may finally see the interior of Antarctica begin to warm with the rest of the world," in the words of Judith Perlwitz of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, which is a joint institute of the university and NOAA.

The large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns are known as a positive phase of the Southern Annular Mode, or SAM which, according to the scientists, now shield the Antarctic interior from the warmer air masses to the north and would begin to collapse during the austral summer once stratospheric ozone levels have returned to the same levels they were at before 1969.

All this is due to the ironic fact that as ozone gasses gather and coalesce, the polar region's lower atmosphere will actually absorb more UV radiation from the Sun.

Steven Pawson of NASA says that ozone-induced climate change seems to have occurred within only 30 years’ time, and the seasonal changes will take longer to come full force as the gasses will re-collect more slowly than they were depleted.

Over time, the net result would probably be that Australia would become drier and warmer, while South America would become wetter and cooler.

The conclusions of CIRES were reached by running simulations on NASA supercomputers and assuming human greenhouse gas emissions would double over the next 40 years.

Meanwhile, other scientists have been contemplating ways to use human intervention to cool off the planet in efforts to curb the presumed harmful and destructive effects of climate change. One proposal, based on studies of how volcanic eruptions can lead to the destruction of ozone, is to inject very large amounts of sulfates into the Earth’s stratosphere in order to block out much of the Sun’s UV rays.

However, NCAR scientists estimate that such interventions would obliterate 25% to 75% of the ozone layer that rests above the Arctic and delay the anticipated recovery of the ozone layer over the Antarctic by up to 70 years.

An “ozone hole” develops over Antarctica on an annual basis. NASA concluded in 2005 that this annual hole had begun to shrink in size. The largest ozone hole ever measured occurred in 1998.