Ozone destruction: Record in the North Pole

The ozone layer in the North Pole suffers a unprecedented level of destruction caused by exceptional weather conditions, reported today the French organization National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS).
Late last month, the thinning of the ozone that protects Earth from ultraviolet rays was 40% and there was a "large area", a phenomenon never before observed, the CNRS said in a statement.

The reason for this decline is "a very trust stratospheric winter and persistent" leading to ozone destruction "important" and "exceptionally long until spring."

The Ecology and the Ozone

The European Space Agency (ESA) specifies that the record in the ozone layer is due to strong winds known as 'polar vortex'. This phenomenon isolated air mass over the North Pole and prevents it from mixing with air from midlatitudes. As a result, the state-of-freezing temperatures is very similar to that occurs every winter in Antarctica. Enviasat satellite, ESA has provided data to measure ozone levels.

The destruction of the ozone layer is linked to the presence in the atmosphere of various gases, emitted by aerosols.

At 80 degrees Celsius these gases become harmful to ozone, a phenomenon "recurring" in Antarctica, where temperatures are extremely low "every winter, but less common in the North Pole, where the temperature is higher and conditions more variable weather.

"I do not always meet the circumstances to produce a significant decrease of ozone in that region, said the CNRS, noting that" extreme weather conditions are responsible for the record achieved "this year.

Ecology and the deterioration of the ozone

French scientists, supported by the data sent by monitoring stations deployed on the ground, are now trying to determine the impact this phenomenon will have when the masses of ozone-poor air moving once temperatures rise with the advancement of spring in the ecology.
The CNRS warned that the deterioration of the ozone layer would have been higher in 1987 had not signed the Montreal Protocol, which limits the use of aerosols.

These products, which emit gases rich in chlorine and bromine remain in the atmosphere for years, so that the French scientists did not rule out destruction of the ozone layer similar to this year be repeated if there are again exceptionally cold winters and the ecology .
According to the latest assessment of the ozone layer, this gas will not recover its 1980 level until the years 2045-2060 at the South Pole and one or two decades earlier in the North.