Research Highlights

Nature Reports Climate Change
Published online: 19 June 2008 | doi:10.1038/climate.2008.61

Waning winds

Olive Heffernan

Science 320, 1486–1489 (2008)

NASA

Recovery of the Earth's ozone layer could weaken climate change in the Southern Hemisphere, scientists have discovered. As the hole in the atmosphere heals, they predict that a westerly wind, or 'jet stream', will slow near the South Pole, countering this wind pattern's acceleration in recent decades as a result of rising greenhouse gas levels.

A multinational research team, led by Seok-woo Son of Columbia University, New York, used chemistry–climate models to investigate how wind and pressure patterns in the Southern Hemisphere are likely to be affected by the recovery of ozone up until 2050. They found that ozone restoration, by warming the portion of the lower atmosphere at a height of around 20 kilometres, slows the jet stream as it nears the pole. Such a shift would influence surface temperatures, the extent of sea ice, the location of storm tracks and arid regions, ocean circulation and the exchange of carbon dioxide between the atmosphere and ocean.

The study challenges the most recent findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which predicts the wind will continue to accelerate near the pole over the century. The effect of ozone recovery should be more carefully accounted for in climate predictions, say the authors.