Ozone Hole

The Verdict Ain't Good
In amidst all the bad ecological signs is one of the biggest doozies of them all - the hole in the Ozone Layer above the Antarctic. The pciture above is the size of the thing at its peak in 2003. The WMO is now reporting the hole has grown larger in the last year.

The UN agency's top ozone expert added that seasonal depletion of the protective gas layer, which filters harmful ultraviolet rays that can cause skin cancer, may become more pronounced in the near future before the problem diminishes.

Large reductions in the ozone layer, which sits about 15-30 km (9-19 miles) above the earth, take place each winter over the polar regions, especially the Antarctic, as low temperatures allow the formation of stratospheric clouds that assist chemical reactions breaking down ozone.

The WMO said meteorological data showed last winter was warmer than in 2003 but colder than in 2004.

"At this stage it looks like this year's ozone hole will be quite average or maybe a little above average," Geir Braathen, WMO's ozone expert, told a news briefing.

Scientists say the hole spanned a record 29 million sq km (11 million sq miles) in September 2003, exposing the southern tip of South America.

The WMO said on Tuesday the area where temperatures are low enough for clouds to have formed -- an indication of the potential hole size -- now covered about 25 million square km.

"This area is near the 1995-2004 mean and higher than observed in 2004 but somewhat lower than in 2003," it said.

I love how these articles read so clear of conscience. Sort of as if the journalist never had to think about the issue ever before. Anyway, I'm not here to slam the journalism. It closes with:

"We still expect the ozone hole to appear annually and it actually might be a little bit worse in the next five to 10 years, then the situation will start to improve," he said.

"It will still take several decades before these substances have disappeared from the atmosphere. We expect the annual recurring ozone hole to take place until maybe mid-century."

The Geneva-based WMO, which has 181 member states, bases its analysis on data collected from satellites, ground-based observations and balloons launched into the atmosphere.

The thing that gets me about this hole is that because it sits above Antarctica, nobody seems to care. If it sat right above Washington DC, then there might have been a more significant effort to fix it.