Neural Gourmet Archives | Feed Your Brain
Neural Gourmet Archives | Feed Your Brain
Today's NASA Science News talks about an interesting puzzle that is intriguing climate scientists. It looks like Earth's UV protective ozone layer is being repaired, but scientists aren't sure how. When it was first understood in the 1980s that man made chloroflurocarbons (CFCs) were probably responsible for the deteriorating ozone layer, governments around the world quickly enacted legislation to ban the use of CFCs in the Montreal Protocol. Now a group of NASA and university researchers lead by Dr. Eun-Su Yang at the Georgia Institute of Technology have found that the recovery of ozone in the upper stratosphere can be almost entirely explained by reductions in CFCs.
What is puzzling the researchers is that ozone in the lower stratosphere is recovering better than predicted. Changing wind patters are one explanation but no one can really say definitively what process is fueling the faster than expected recovery of the ozone layer at lower altitudes. Still, this is good news. Even while the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica continues to widen, the ozone over the rest of the planet is doing well and we might expect a full recovery to 1980 levels sometime between 2030 and 2070.
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They kicked his Right Reverend Nigil Stickybottom off the Presidential Prayer Team. I can't imagine why. Maybe it was my, I mean the Right Reverend's, suggestion that we all pray for the Good Lord to extract Bush's head from his ass? Well, in any case, they lost their most pious and patriotic member and their efficacy is surely reduced immeasurably.
