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Published online 12 August 2009 | Nature 460, 792-795 (2009) | doi:10.1038/460792a

News Feature

Atmospheric science: Fixing the sky

When nations made plans to save the ozone layer, they didn't factor in global warming. Quirin Schiermeier reports on how two environmental problems complicate each other.

Quirin Schiermeier

Later this month, something sinister will start to take shape above Antarctica. As sunlight reappears in the polar skies after the long winter, chlorine and bromine compounds in the stratosphere will begin destroying part of the ozone layer that shelters Earth's surface from harmful ultraviolet radiation.

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  • I am pleased to see this timely review of the Montreal Protocol, but expected far better editorial oversight and referencing. Nature itself published the first paper, more than a decade ago, that evaluated "The Road Not Taken" (Prather, Midgley, Rowland, and Stolarski, Nature 381: 551-554, 1996), a study renamed by a subsequent generation as the world avoided.

    • 12 Aug, 2009
    • Posted by: Michael Prather

  • Ozone effect on Icehouse (East Antarctica) - good or bad?

    Removing ozone from lower stratosphere (i.e. ozone hole) cools cold air further over Antarctica. Also ozone decrease, and carbon dioxide increase both contribute to increase in southern westerlies, which support ACC (Antarctica circumpolar current). Increase in westerlies pushes surface cold water away from Antarctica, and allows upwelling of salty warm watrer (1). Do we fully understand what long term effect ozone (increase or decrease) might have on Antarctica weather? Should we precede slowly?

    1. J. R. Toggweiler & Joellen Russell, Ocean circulation in a warming climate, Nature 451, 286- 288 17 January 2008, and references therein.

    • 21 Sep, 2009
    • Posted by: zanardm