The Importance of Our O-Zone Layer
The Importance of Our O-Zone Layer
The ozone layer is one of the oldest things on the planet, older than any of the ancient creatures we see in our museums today. The ozone layer has provided protection for the living components under it for millions of years, and without the ozone layer, we most likely would not be here today. Our evolution would have been cut off millions of years ago without our planet’s ability to provide protection from the ever-harmful rays from our sun.
Each year since the late 1970’s much of the protective layer of stratospheric ozone above Antarctica has disappeared during September, creating what is commonly known as the ozone hole. The Antarctic hole now measures about 9 million square miles, nearly the size of North America. Less dramatic, but still significant, depletion of ozone levels has been recorded around the globe. With less ozone in the atmosphere, more ultraviolet radiation strikes the earth, causing more skin cancer, eye damage, and possible harm to crops.
At this point you may be asking yourself why is the hole over Antarctica? What is unique about Antarctica that would cause a hole the size of North America to form over its vast presence? Those seem to be some of the first questions that come to peoples’ minds when contemplating the hole in our atmosphere. The answer is this, During the Antarctic winter, an oval shaped polar vortex, is formed over the South Pole area. The vortex brings ozone rich air from above, ozone poor air is pushed out. The vortex is extremely cold, reaching temperatures of -80 degrees Celsius. These cold conditions help cause large clouds to form in the crystals of nitric acid inside of the clouds. As the cloud of water and nitric acid starts to grow, it can grow to the point where it covers the entire Antarctic region. When sunlight passes through the cloud, ozone-destroying chlorine and chlorine oxide are formed from the inactive chlorine and nitric acid in the cloud. The chlorine and chlorine oxide can count for up to 70% of the ozone depletion over Antarctica each year.
Possible solutions to this problem are being evaluated many ideas of trying to manually repair the ozone hole have been looked at. According to what I have read and researched the most...