7ronin
海軍少佐
Tycoon101 said:
Flatulent penguins?
Ozone hole is shrinking
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Flatulent penguins?
GenMarshall
High Elven ISB Capt & Ghost Agent
Thats god, less reported sunburns 
Urederra
Mostly harmless
Thorgalaeg said:
Correct. The problem is that in the poles UV radiation is weaker than in the equator. (The poles have a six months of no or very low UV radiation because of the Earth's tilt). The ozone holes are in the poles because the CFCs destroys ozone and UV radiation in the poles is not strong enough to compensate the loss.
So, the hole is shrinking right now because O3 production in the poles is higher that the amount of O3 being destroyed by CFCs, rather than by diffusion from other higher O3 concentration zones.
Not an expert in the area, but I think that is the correct thing.
Thorgalaeg
Deity
Well that is correct but only explains why there is less ozone in both poles, however it fails to explain why there is a huge ozone hole in the south pole but not in the north pole.
In fact the explanation is a bit more complex and very interesting. The key are the special atmospheric conditions around the south pole. The non existence of oceanic water masses in the south pole generates along the Antartic winter an isolated zone of, lets say, low energy. In this zone there are not winds at high altitudes and the temperatures are *incredibly* low. It is some sort of "dead zone". These very special conditions manage to the formation of an special cloud type at very high altitude called Polar Stratospheric Clouds (PSC).
This sort of cloud is indeed a very special (and spectacular) type of cloud. It is formed by cristals of nitric acid, sulfurs and other compounds, some generated by human activity, condensed with water vapor. These cristals grow up in number and size and form a reactive cloud that is "eating" all the CFCs and other halogenated compounds it finds in his way, converting them in very reactive forms. For instance the HCl is converted in ClO.
When winter ends and sunrise comes in October or so (this explains why every year in October the hole grows quickly), sunlight radiation makes possible chemical reactions in which compounds like ClO in presence of atoms of splitted oxygen can produce free Clorhide atoms, that can work as catalysts in O3 destruction. This means that after the reaction the Cl regenerates, so an atom of Clorhide can destroy countless molecoules of O3.
O2 (UV) --> 2O
ClO + O --> Cl +O2
Cl + O3 --> ClO + O2
ClO + O --> Cl + O2
...
PSC:
In fact the explanation is a bit more complex and very interesting. The key are the special atmospheric conditions around the south pole. The non existence of oceanic water masses in the south pole generates along the Antartic winter an isolated zone of, lets say, low energy. In this zone there are not winds at high altitudes and the temperatures are *incredibly* low. It is some sort of "dead zone". These very special conditions manage to the formation of an special cloud type at very high altitude called Polar Stratospheric Clouds (PSC).
This sort of cloud is indeed a very special (and spectacular) type of cloud. It is formed by cristals of nitric acid, sulfurs and other compounds, some generated by human activity, condensed with water vapor. These cristals grow up in number and size and form a reactive cloud that is "eating" all the CFCs and other halogenated compounds it finds in his way, converting them in very reactive forms. For instance the HCl is converted in ClO.
When winter ends and sunrise comes in October or so (this explains why every year in October the hole grows quickly), sunlight radiation makes possible chemical reactions in which compounds like ClO in presence of atoms of splitted oxygen can produce free Clorhide atoms, that can work as catalysts in O3 destruction. This means that after the reaction the Cl regenerates, so an atom of Clorhide can destroy countless molecoules of O3.
O2 (UV) --> 2O
ClO + O --> Cl +O2
Cl + O3 --> ClO + O2
ClO + O --> Cl + O2
...
PSC:
