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Ozone Layer/Greenhouse Effect Link

Reythia
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Ozone Layer/Greenhouse Effect Link

So back when I was a kid, the hot eco-topic was the vanishing ozone layer. Now it's global warming. Oddly enough, those two topics are rarely connected. This week's EOS newsletter had an article about the link, though, as it effects Antarctica. The article is "The Artic and Antarctic: Two Faces of Climate Change" by J Overland et al.

They talk about how one of the effects of the "ozone hole" above Antarctica is a marked cooling of the upper atmosphere. This cooling enhances the "Southern Annular Mode" (SAM), which is the westerly circumpolar winds. The upper-atmospheric cooling causes the winds to get cooler (obviously!) and also move further towards the poles -- ie: towards Antarctica rather than the ocean around it. The effects of this wind shift depend on what part of Antarctica you're looking at, and the full story is often twisted up with whatever's going on in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC), which is the main ocean current travelling around Antarctica.

According to the article, the primary effects (both modelled and measured) of the ozone-hole-provoked wind change are to cool the eastern half of Antarctica while warming the Antarctic Penninsula and areas near Drake's Passage (coastlines in western Antarctica).

What this means is that, even assuming that global warming was making ice melt evenly across Antarctica (which it isn't for other reasons), the ozone hole's effects would still cool the east and warm the west. Which means that when you combine the two, you end up with extra melting in the west, but ice GAIN in the east -- which is largely what we see in real life.

Well good! Here's a friendly feedback, for once, you think. And it is... for now.

The catch is that we've more or less stopped destroying the ozone layer now, thanks to a lot of good work done in the 80s. Which means that eventually -- within our lifetimes -- the ozone-hole-fed feedback loop is going to diminish and stop. And as it does, melt is going to increase significantly in the eastern Antarctic -- which is the bigger half.

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-- YAR!

5/19/2008, 6:29 pm

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QS2
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Re: Ozone Layer/Greenhouse Effect Link

So that is why the Peninsula is melting so fast, I was wondering what could have caused that shift in wind patterns. I have to say this is very interesting overall and it is nice that for now East Antarctica is protected a bit.

5/20/2008, 7:59 am

David Meadows
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Re: Ozone Layer/Greenhouse Effect Link

So, the solution would be to use a lot more aerosols. We don't actually need ozone over the Antarctic anyway, so it's a small price to pay to preserve the ice sheets.

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"Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed."
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5/20/2008, 10:12 am

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Reythia
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Re: Ozone Layer/Greenhouse Effect Link

quote:
David Meadows wrote:
So, the solution would be to use a lot more aerosols. We don't actually need ozone over the Antarctic anyway, so it's a small price to pay to preserve the ice sheets.

Our Aussie friends might disagree with that! So would my friends who do periodic research in Antarctica. And what about all those sun-burned penguins???

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-- YAR!

5/20/2008, 4:23 pm

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