ŠIAULIŲ KOLEGIJOS
VERSLO IR TECHNOLOGIJŲ FAKULTETO
Humanitarinių mokslų studijų katedra
Kostas Povilaitis
Gamtotvarkos vadybos programos ištęstinių studijų 1 kurso studento
Ozone holes
Referatas
Tikrino: asist. Domas Auga
Šiauliai, 2009
Introduction
ozone hole Healing Could Cause Further Climate Warming
Introduction
The atmosphere is a complex, dynamic natural gaseous system that is essential to support life on planet earth. Stratospheric ozone depletion due to air pollution has long been recognized as a threat to human health as well as to the earth’s ecosystems. Worldwide air pollution is responsible for large numbers of deaths and cases of respiratory disease. Enforced air quality standards, like the Clean Air Act in the United States, have reduced the presence of some pollutants. While major stationary sources are often identified with air pollution, the greatest source of emissions are actually mobile sources, principally the automobile. There are many available air pollution control technologies and urban planning strategies available to reduce air pollution; however, worldwide costs of addressing the issue are high. The ozone layer is the part of the Earth’s atmosphere which contains relatively high concentrations of ozone (O3).”Relatively high” means a few parts per million – much higher than the concentrations in the lower atmosphere but still small compared to the main components of the atmosphere.Although the concentration of ozone in the ozone layer is very small, it is vitally important to life because it absorbs biologically harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the Sun.The “thickness” of the ozone layer – that is, the total amount of ozone in a column overhead – varies by a large factor worldwide, being in general smaller near the equator and larger as one moves towards the poles. It also varies with season, being in general thicker during the spring and thinner during the autumn.
The Term Paper on Air Pollution Pollutants Atmosphere Smog
Air Pollution is addition of harmful substances to the atmosphere resulting in damage to the environment, human health, and quality of life. One of many forms of pollution, air pollution occurs inside homes, schools, and offices; in cities; across continents; and even globally. Air pollution makes people sick, it causes breathing problems and promotes cancer, and it harms plants, animals, and the ...
Ozone Hole Healing Could Cause Further Climate Warming
The hole in the ozone layer is now steadily closing, but its repair could actually increase warming in the southern hemisphere, according to scientists at the University of Leeds. The Antarctic ozone hole was once regarded as one of the biggest environmental threats, but the discovery of a previously undiscovered feedback shows that it has instead helped to shield this region from carbon-induced warming over the past two decades. High-speed winds in the area beneath the hole have led to the formation of brighter summertime clouds, which reflect more of the sun’s powerful rays. “These clouds have acted like a mirror to the sun’s rays, reflecting the sun’s heat away from the surface to the extent that warming from rising carbon emissions has effectively been cancelled out in this region during the summertime,” said Professor Ken Carslaw of the University of Leeds who co-authored the research. “If, as seems likely, these winds die down, rising CO2 emissions could then cause the warming of the southern hemisphere to accelerate, which would have an impact on future climate predictions,” he added. The key to this newly-discovered feedback is aerosol — tiny reflective particles suspended within the air that are known by experts to have a huge impact on climate.
The Essay on Ozone Hole Layer Cfc Air
The Importance of the Ozone " Like an infection that grows more and more virulent, the continent-size hole in Earth's ozone layer keeps getting bigger and bigger" (Beyond Discovery). The ozone is a protective layer that occurs naturally in the stratosphere, 6 to 28 miles in altitude. Each year, since the late 1970's, much of the ozone layer above Antarctica has disappeared, creating what is ...
Greenhouses gases absorb infrared radiation from the Earth and release it back into the atmosphere as heat, causing the planet to warm up over time. Aerosol works against this by reflecting heat from the sun back into space, cooling the planet as it does so. Beneath the Antarctic ozone hole, high-speed winds whip up large amounts of sea spray, which contains millions of tiny salt particles. This spray then forms droplets and eventually clouds, and the increased spray over the last two decades has made these clouds brighter and more reflective. As the ozone layer recovers it is believed that this feedback mechanism could decline in effectiveness, or even be reversed, leading to accelerated warming in the southern hemisphere. “Our research highlights the value of today’s state-of- the-art models and long-term datasets that enable such unexpected and complex climate feedbacks to be detected and accounted for in our future predictions,” added Professor Carslaw. The Leeds team made their prediction using a state-of-the-art global model of aerosols and two decades of meteorological data. The research was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council’s Surface Ocean-Lower Atmosphere Study (UK SOLAS) and the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence Programme.