Opinion: Stratospheric Ozone – Depletion, Recovery and New Challenges
Résumé
We give a personal perspective on recent issues related to the depletion of stratospheric ozone and some newly emerging challenges. We first provide a brief review of historic work on understanding the ozone layer where we highlight some work from the late Paul Crutzen as a contribution to the special issue in his honour. We then review the status of ozone recovery from the effects of halogenated source gases and discuss the undoubted effectiveness of the Montreal Protocol and its challenges from renewed production of controlled substances and short-lived uncontrolled substances. We then discuss, in some detail, the recent observations of ozone depletion through injection of smoke particles from Australian fires in early 2020. Further unexpected perturbations to the ozone layer are occurring at the moment through injection of very large amounts of water vapour (and some sulphur dioxide) from the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha`apai volcano in January 2022. We conclude with some thoughts on the urgent need to ensure continuity in observations and on how to exploit ever more complex and expensive models. Overall, the stratospheric ozone layer continues to produce novel research challenges and reveal more processes that threaten this essential component of the Earth system.
Domaines
Planète et Univers [physics]Origine | Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s) |
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