Ozone hole over Antarctica grows to one of the largest on record, scientists say
The annual ozone hole that forms over Antarctica has ballooned to near-record size, scientists say.
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Lol oh man I remember back in the 90s before everyone gave up when we were trying to actually shrink that thing
We shrunk it and it was as good as done once everyone stopped using those gases.
Over the last few years satellites have picked up greatly increasing emissions of them from China. Hence it’s opening up again.
Oh and before any hexchud wants to say this is fake news or whatever:
We show that emissions from eastern mainland China are 7.0 ± 3.0 (±1 standard deviation) gigagrams per year higher in 2014–2017 than in 2008–2012, and that the increase in emissions arises primarily around the northeastern provinces of Shandong and Hebei. This increase accounts for a substantial fraction (at least 40 to 60 per cent) of the global rise in CFC-11 emissions. We find no evidence for a significant increase in CFC-11 emissions from any other eastern Asian countries or other regions of the world where there are available data for the detection of regional emissions.
I'm curious what the actual source is. CFCs are practically obsolete and there is no point in producing them when HCFCs are cheap and hydrocarbon refrigerants are practically free. You'd think China would be using R290 and R600a in any new builds since they're so cost sensitive. You can even straight swap R290 to replace R22 if they want to use old compressors or something.
I'm wondering if this is a pile of old refrigeration equipment that was dumped and shipped to China, and is now being scrapped in an irresponsible manner or just corroding and leaking. I'm sure there's loads of R11/12/22 out there, as R12 refrigerators are still regularly dropped off at our local scrap pile here in Canada.
Well the article says it's mostly caused by an underwater volcano's emission that happened last year, that's just reaching now the south pole, and concentrating there atm because of how winds work due to Earth's rotation.
Everybody is blaming anything they can, and not even bothering reading the news. Pretty on par with the internet.
Thanks for posting the finding links. I hadn’t heard this before and it gives me a good place to start reading. Crazy that we know this is bad for the earth but we keep doing it. I wrote that sentence and mid way through realized how naive it sounds 😖
We actually did fix it. The whole world came together and banned those gases. It was a masterpiece of global cooperation.
Unfortunately they've started being detected again in growing quantities in recent years.
Last I heard those emissions had starting going back down. Was there anything new on that front since then?
My theory is old vehicles and machinery are gonna release gas