Became the "deepest" in the history of observations (more than 20 years) and approached in scale to the Antarctic ozone hole, according to an article published in the journal Nature.
A sharp drop in stratospheric ozone, the "ozone hole", was first detected in the 1980s over Antarctica. According to modern concepts, the destruction of ozone (triatomic oxygen molecules O3) is associated with exposure to substances of the chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) group, the most famous of which is the group of freons.
Under the influence sunlight and stratospheric cold, these substances form aggressive chlorine compounds that destroy the ozone layer - a shield that protects life on Earth from harmful hard ultraviolet radiation. In 1987, the Montreal Protocol was adopted, which prohibits the production of CFCs, but their natural disappearance will take several decades.
In the winter and spring of 2010-2011, for the first time, a process was observed in the Arctic that could be called the formation of an ozone hole. In early April, the World Meteorological Organization announced that the amount of ozone in the atmosphere in the Arctic region fell by a record 40% this winter.
A group of scientists led by Gloria Manney from the Laboratory jet propulsion NASA analyzed in detail the formation of the ozone hole and concluded that this event was unprecedented in its scale, and if the winter in the Arctic were a little more severe, the drop in ozone concentration would be even more dramatic.
"For the first time in our north, this is happening. The decrease in the amount of ozone in the Arctic has always been much less pronounced than in Antarctica. In 1994-1995 there was a drop of 30%, but this has never happened before. Now the drop was 40%, this is already comparable to Antarctica, where the ozone hole is 50% -60%. The order is already the same," one of the authors of the study, Valery Dorokhov, senior, told RIA Novosti. Researcher Central Aerological Observatory of Roshydromet.
The ozone hole in the polar regions occurs when, due to low temperatures in the stratosphere (below 78 degrees below zero), water vapor and Nitric acid form the so-called polar stratospheric clouds. These clouds and other cold aerosols give long-lived chlorine compounds, in particular CFCs, the ability to convert into highly reactive compounds such as chlorine oxide, which kill ozone.
In the winter of 2010-2011, the circumpolar vortex, a strip of strong stratospheric air currents around the polar zone, which did not let warm air to the pole, lasted for an unusually long time in the Arctic. As a result, by the beginning of spring, the ozone concentration dropped sharply.
"This period, when cold air is kept there, usually lasts 2-2.5 months. And this time it dragged on for four months - until April, although it usually ends in March," Dorokhov said.
The scientists note that temperatures below the 78-degree threshold in the Arctic have stayed between 15 and 23 degrees for more than 100 days. At the same time, the fall in the amount of ozone below the level of 250 Dobson units in the spring was observed for 27 days, and below 230 - within a week.
"In this regard, the decline in the amount of ozone in the Arctic for the first time has reached a level at which one can speak of an Arctic ozone hole," the article says. Its authors note that the area bounded by the circumpolar vortex in the Arctic is much smaller than in Antarctica, but it is more mobile.
"Stronger ozone depletion in the Arctic could increase biological risks from stronger exposure to ultraviolet radiation, especially if the vortex zone shifts towards more densely populated mid-latitudes, as happened in April 2011," the scientists wrote.
The increase in the strength of ultraviolet radiation can lead, in particular, to an increase in the number of cases of cataracts, Dorokhov notes.
The authors of the study say there are currently no methods to predict the recurrence of such ozone depletion events. For their development, it is necessary to collect more accurate data on the state of the winter stratosphere.
"Therefore, we must be ready, we must constantly monitor. Ozone observations in Russia have been carried out since the 1960s, but these are measurements of the total content. The vertical distribution is measured by only one station, in Salekhard. Now, together with scientists from St. Petersburg, we We plan to make one more point at the hydrometeorological observatory in Tiksi," Dorokhov said.
Russia has fallen into the ozone hole. Looking forward to a cold winter?
For the first time recorded a sharp decrease in the thickness of the ozone layer in the Northern HemisphereAs reported in scientific journal Nature Dr. Michelle Santee and his colleagues from NASA (Nasa's Jet Propulsion laboratory), the thickness of the ozone layer in the Arctic has reached record low values. At altitudes of the order of 20 kilometers, it has decreased by as much as 80 percent. hole" in a place where there was none before.
The "ozone hole" usually appears over Antarctica - in the Southern Hemisphere. In the North, such a phenomenon has always looked so insignificant that they did not pay attention to it. Now the thinning has turned out to be simply supernatural. And a hole appeared over the Arctic, comparable in scale to the Antarctic.
Experts fear that a hole in the layer that protects the Earth from harsh ultraviolet radiation could harm both humans and animals, with skin burns and eye damage.
Scientists suggest that the anomaly is associated with a very low temperature, which has been established in the stratosphere. A few years ago, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned of such a cold snap. She assured me that it has been going on since 1979.
And the colder it is in the stratosphere, the more active are the substances that destroy ozone in the layers closer to the Earth. But this is just a hypothesis. From what exactly the current "hole" arose, which captures the territories of Canada and Russia, is not known.
It is possible that it - the "ozone hole" over the Arctic - is somehow connected with very cold winters that followed one after another. But what is the root cause, again, it is not clear: either, having appeared, it aggravated the frosts. In the latter case, the approaching winter threatens to become harsh again in our Northern Hemisphere.
BY THE WAY
American scientists have found a more powerful destroyer - the so-called laughing gas - nitrous oxide. And it is possible that this substance is now destroying ozone instead of CFCs.
Moreover, it turned out that CFCs prevent laughing gas from destroying the ozone layer. Today, there are almost no "interferences".
Nitrous oxide is the result of global warming. So say researchers led by Maya Repo from the Finnish University of Kuopio.
Measurements have shown that laughing gas is oozing from swampy regions of the Russian Arctic. Its powerful sources are peat circles. Each of them square meter emits 1.2 grams per season. This is far more than anything else on the planet. In terms of natural sources. And the areas with such "amusing" circles occupy more than 20 percent of the area in the north of Russia. For example, in the Komi Republic. And further along the entire coast of the Arctic Ocean.
In other words, millions of laughing tons are expected to arrive.
Scientists believe that bacteria that process nitrates, nitrogenous compounds that are not absorbed by plants, began to gas intensively. If things go on like this, and it goes on - the permafrost thaws, turns into swamps, then it will become more fun to live not only in Russia. The wind will carry the joyous gas around the planet. But it is not the worldwide laughter that frightens researchers. They see the main danger in the fact that nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas. And he makes a powerful contribution to the process of global warming. Remains in the atmosphere for over 110 years. That is, 10 times longer than methane, another greenhouse gas that seeps out of the tundra.
Recently, German scientists reported that a significant ozone hole has formed over the Arctic. Its appearance is associated with the greenhouse effect, which led to the cooling of the upper atmosphere. However, this version is very doubtful, since such phenomena occurred in more distant eras, when there were no people on Earth yet.
Climatologists continue to scare the inhabitants of our planet with impending cataclysms. Recently, German scientists announced that a giant ozone hole has formed over the Arctic in a relatively short period of time. According to them, this very hole appeared in just a few weeks, as a result of which half of the precious ozone layer in the region was destroyed.
"If the conditions for such an extremely rapid depletion of the ozone layer continue, we expect further depletion," said Markus Rex, an atmospheric researcher at the Alfred Wegener Institute. True, at the same time, he added that climatologists cannot yet establish the reasons for this phenomenon.
However, the mechanism of formation of the ozone hole in this case is clear. According to German climatologists, obtained from 30 different Arctic weather stations, this year the "ozone crisis" over the Arctic occurred due to unusually cold temperatures in the stratosphere (the upper layer of the atmosphere starting above 11 kilometers above the Earth's surface), and this was the result of strong circulation , called the polar whirlpool, which lasted all winter.
The result of this circulation was the formation of polar clouds, which consist of frozen particles of nitric and sulfuric acid. It is known that their formation begins when temperatures in the stratosphere fall below minus 78 degrees Celsius. chemical reactions on the surface of the particles, the clouds convert the initially chemically inert substances chlorofluorocarbonates (CHF 2 Cl) into active substances that react with ozone.
Ultimately, ozone, which, as we remember, contains three oxygen atoms (O 3), reacts with the halogens contained in the "aggressor" and ceases to exist - all three atoms are pulled away by active chlorine or fluorine. True, it cannot be said that this contributes to the appearance of a hole, that is, a space where there is no ozone at all - the aggressive activity of chlorofluorocarbon clouds only leads to the fact that in the place of their localization the ozone layer simply becomes quite thin. That is, in physical sense there is no hole, of course. And the destroyer substance itself, having acquired "stolen" oxygen, is destroyed and ceases to be active.
But why there is such a decrease in temperatures in the stratosphere and, consequently, the formation of polar clouds, scientists do not yet know. Attempts are being made to connect this process with the mythical, but very popular in last years the idea of global warming, and even the following mechanism is proposed - they say that a large amount of greenhouse gases lingers in the lower layers of the atmosphere, they trap heat rising from the Earth's surface, and this leads to cooling of the upper atmosphere.
The absurdity of this scheme is visible even from theoretical calculations of the processes occurring in the air shell of our planet. Any schoolchild knows that with a temperature difference in two areas of the atmosphere, circulation immediately occurs, leading to the mixing of warm and cold air masses (this, as we remember, explains the occurrence of wind, as well as the movement of cyclones). That is, to put it simply, if there really were a significant temperature difference in different layers of the atmosphere, then the resulting vertical circulation would rather quickly eliminate the "greenhouse plug", since as a result of it the gases that create it would be evenly distributed over all layers of the atmosphere.
In addition, this scheme is contradicted by the fact that polar clouds formed earlier, when there was no talk of any global warming yet. They were first recorded back in the 50s of the last century, but later it became clear that they periodically (about once every 11 years) appear over the Arctic and Antarctic in early spring and disappear in early September. It is assumed that the cooling of the stratosphere over the poles that contributes to their appearance is associated with small cycles of solar activity (although there is still no evidence for this).
Paleoclimatologists say that, according to available data, such phenomena are very characteristic of the so-called cryo-eras (epochs when the Earth has cold regions at the poles and hot regions at the equator). Cryoeres, as is known, are characteristic of the late Paleozoic and Cenozoic, that is, of our time, but the entire dinosaur mesozoic era was a thermoera (when the climate throughout the Earth was uniformly warm, there were no polar glaciations and hot equatorial regions). Accordingly, polar clouds did not form then.
So, apparently, the appearance of polar stratospheric clouds is a completely natural cyclic process. But where do their constituent hydrogen halides come from in the stratosphere? Most likely, they appear both as a result of human activity (as we know, they are used to make freons used in various cooling devices, which, despite all precautions, still penetrate the atmosphere), and as a result of volcanic eruptions. And if we take into account that last year the volcanic activity on Earth was very high (one Icelandic Eyjafjallajokull was worth something!), It is not surprising that there were more than enough raw materials for their formation in the Earth's air shell.
What threatens this ozone hole to all mankind? Most likely nothing. Despite the fact that the media and the Internet constantly scare non-specialists with the catastrophic consequences of this phenomenon, scientists are well aware that the ozone layer is a self-regulating system that perfectly knows how to repair itself.
Let me remind you that the ozone layer, located at an altitude of 12 to 50 kilometers (more precisely, in tropical latitudes at an altitude of 25-30 kilometers, in temperate latitudes - 20-25 kilometers, and in polar ones - 15-20 kilometers), is formed from for the interaction of ultraviolet radiation coming from the Sun to the Earth with the oxygen in our atmosphere. However, when the concentration of ozone becomes significant, it begins to absorb dangerous ultraviolet rays and protect everything living on land (and in the upper layers of the ocean) from harmful radiation.
However, by absorbing radiation, it thereby prevents further formation of ozone and, accordingly, an increase in the thickness of the protective layer. Conversely, when the layer becomes thinner, ultraviolet begins to more actively penetrate into the lower layers of the atmosphere, causing the conversion of oxygen into ozone. This is how the ozone holes are repaired.
Some time ago, reports of holes in the ozone layer over Antarctica were on the front pages of newspapers. Since then, almost nothing has been heard on this subject - until recently. The data for this year is discouraging: now in another part of the world, in the Arctic, the level of stratospheric ozone has dropped to a record level. Scientists do not consider what is happening a disaster, but recommend that you carefully monitor what is happening.
At the same time, the World Meteorological Organization has officially warned that residents of the extreme northern latitudes may receive slightly increased doses of ultraviolet radiation. In addition, it is expected that ozone-poor air masses may shift from North Pole to the south, up to the southern regions of Scandinavia.
According to experts, the reason for the "depletion" of the air with ozone was the record cold of this winter, noted in the polar regions, which, in turn, were caused by the increased strength of the winds of the polar (otherwise - circumpolar) vortex, which led to an unusual isolation of atmospheric masses over the North Pole from warmer southern areas. As a result, high in the stratosphere, at 18-25 km altitude, where the temperature dropped to an impressive -78 ° C, clouds formed, near the surface of which the reaction of ozone decay and its transformation into ordinary molecular oxygen took place.
This process is rare in the Arctic, although over the Antarctic it occurs almost every local winter. Therefore, "ozone holes" in the vicinity South Pole- it is quite a routine thing, while over the North this happens at all infrequently. This time the loss of ozone in the region of the North Pole amounted to about 40%.
Recall that the upper layers are conventionally called the ozone layer. earth's atmosphere, in which, due to the absorption of energy from the ultraviolet radiation of the Sun, oxygen passes into the form of ozone, accumulating here. Ozone itself is very effective at absorbing dangerous ultraviolet rays and protecting land-dwelling organisms from harmful radiation. Decrease in ozone concentration in these areas leads to the fact that more UV rays reach the land surface, which can have the most unfortunate effect on living organisms.
“In general,” says NASA climatologist Paul Newman, “ozone depletion is not too much of a surprise. Ozone layer today still remains in great danger, since the content of chlorine in the stratosphere is still relatively high. Despite the fact that its emissions are strictly controlled under the Montreal Protocol, the level is decreasing slowly.” Accordingly, the restoration of the ozone layer is a matter of a long time and requires the constant attention of our civilization to everything that it does.
According to Universe Today
In 1968, the American meteorological satellite ESSA-7 transmitted strange images to Earth that baffled scientists. In the photographs in the region of the North Pole, a huge hole of the correct round shape is clearly visible.
The authenticity of the photographs is not in doubt. But how to explain this phenomenon? Several hypotheses have been put forward. For example, skeptics believe that this is not a hole at all, but a play of light and shadow, the result of the tilt of the planet in relation to the sun's rays. But supporters of the Hollow Earth theory were sure that the ESSA-7 image showed the opened entrance to the dungeon. But most scientists have a different opinion.
School problem about the pool
From the school bench we know that the mighty warm North Atlantic Current, the continuation of the Gulf Stream, climbs far to the north, into the Arctic. But what draws him to the North Pole? Geography textbooks explain this phenomenon by the rotation of the Earth.
However, another powerful current (only cold) rushes into the Arctic Ocean through the Bering Strait from Pacific Ocean. If it were controlled by the rotation of the Earth, the current would move east along Alaska and across the Beaufort Sea to the shores of Canada. And contrary to the theory, it carries its waters to the northwest, gravitating, again, to the North Pole.
And now the school problem about the pool. Water enters the Arctic Ocean, as it were, through three "faucets". The largest, with warm water, from the Atlantic - 298 thousand cubic kilometers per year. Second, with cold water, from the Pacific Ocean through the Bering Strait - 36 thousand cubic kilometers per year. The third is the fresh flow of the rivers of Siberia and Alaska - 4 thousand cubic kilometers per year.
In total, 338 thousand cubic kilometers of water flows into this basin annually. And the discharge occurs across the Atlantic, through the Faroe-Shetland Canal, which passes only 63 thousand cubic kilometers per year. There are no other known stocks. Meanwhile, the water level in the Arctic Ocean is not increasing. Where does the "excess" water go?
Spiral movement
In 1948, by order of Stalin, a high-latitude air expedition "North-2" was organized under the leadership of Alexander Kuznetsov, head of the Main Northern Sea Route. It included Pavel Gordienko, Pavel Senko, Mikhail Somov, Mikhail Ostrekin and other polar explorers.
The expedition was carried out in complete secrecy. There were no reports about her in the media. The materials of the expedition were declassified only in 1956.
On April 23, 1948, the expedition members took off on three planes from Kotelny Island, heading for the North Pole. During the flight, experienced polar explorers were alarmed by the view under the wing: too much open water, which is not at all typical for such high latitudes at this time of the year.
At 16:44 Moscow time, the planes landed on a large ice floe. It was visited by people who became the first undisputed conquerors of the North Pole.
Having descended from the ladder, the expedition members looked around - and were very surprised. Gloomy gray sky, not cold at all. The weather is like a thaw during the winter in the middle lane.
But there was no time to think about this strangeness for a long time: you need to set up camp, set up tents to rest after a hard flight, and then start observing.
However, there was no rest. The life of the polar explorers was saved by the fact that a sentry prudently left outside noticed a crack that split the ice shell right under the ski of the chassis of one of the aircraft. The people who poured out of the tents at the alarm signal watched with horror how the yawning black rift was growing before their eyes. A swift stream of water seethed in it, from which steam came.
The huge ice floe broke into pieces. People rushed away, picked up by a mighty current. A hummock with a red banner crowning the conquered "point zero" disappeared in the swirling foggy darkness. And the unimaginable happened around.
The ice was rushing at an incredible speed, - later Pavel Senko, a specialist in the study magnetic field Land - as it can be imagined only on the river in the ice drift. And it continued like this for more than a day!
At first, the sextant showed that the ice floe with the expedition was rapidly drifting south. But further measurements showed that the direction of movement is changing all the time. Finally, one of the polar explorers guessed that they were drifting around the pole, describing circles with a diameter of about nine nautical miles.
Once a seal swam past the ice floe and even tried to get on it, but the speed of the stream did not allow it. Where did he come from at the pole? After all, seals live only near the borders of the Arctic Circle.
Soon, the polar explorers were horrified to see that the radius of the circles described by the ice floe was constantly decreasing. That is, the trajectory of movement is a centripetal spiral. People seemed to be drawn into a giant funnel, the center of which was at the point of the North Pole.
On the third day of the drift, when there was almost no hope of salvation, it suddenly became colder, and the circulation slowed down at the same time.
Gradually, the fragments of ice tightly rubbed against each other, froze and again became a solid monolithic shield. The miraculously saved expedition was able to return to the mainland.
Frightened submarine
At the beginning of the 21st century, a marine geologist, University of Hawaii professor Margot Edwards, who led the work on creating a detailed map of the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, managed to gain access to a secret report from the US Navy archive.
She learned that in the 1970s an American submarine was mapping the seabed near the North Pole. But the submariners failed to complete this task to the end.
The crew was frightened by the constant strong rumble coming from the depths of the ocean. In addition, some powerful force was constantly striving to divert the submarine from the course. She seemed to be being sucked into a giant whirlpool. Not wanting to further tempt fate, the commander decided to leave the dangerous area.
We thought that we already knew almost everything about the structure of our planet, but it turns out that we were wrong, concludes Margo Edwards.
Rescuer death
In 1998, Andrey Rozhkov, an experienced scuba diver, a world-famous rescuer, who was called the pride of the Russian Emergencies Ministry, organized his own expedition to the North Pole.
It was prepared very carefully, all the details of the upcoming operation were worked out to the smallest detail during numerous training dives under the ice. Therefore, Andrey Rozhkov had no doubts about the success of what he had planned.
On April 22 (that is, half a century after the Sever-2 expedition), Rozhkov and five of his comrades arrived at the North Pole.
They cut a well for scuba divers, strengthening its walls in case of a break and ice shifts. Rozhkov and his partner were lowered into an ice well and went under water. Soon the partner surfaced, as planned.
Andrei continued diving, wishing not only to be the first scuba diver at the Pole, but also to conquer a depth of 50 meters. And that was also the plan. Underwater equipment had the necessary margin of safety. The last signal from Rozhkov came when he reached 50.3 meters.
What exactly happened next, no one knows. He did not rise to the surface. The partner tried to come to the aid of a friend. However, immediately after the dive, he was picked up by such a swift current that the scuba diver was forced to signal upward to rise.
The rate of circulation remained unchanged for about a day. There was no question of any new immersion. Andrei Rozhkov was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Russian Federation.
Will there be subtropics in Siberia?
What is this polar funnel? According to the hypothesis of the Russian researcher Kirill Fatyanov, in the ancient times of Hyperborea, it functioned constantly, not allowing a huge ice cap to grow at the pole, threatening the planet with “overturning” and a worldwide flood as a result (we refer those interested to his book “The Legend of Hyperborea”).
After the planetary war between Hyperborea and its colony Atlantis, both continents sank to the bottom of the sea, the circulation of currents was disturbed, and the polar whirlpool disappeared. But in the 20th century, it periodically began to resume its activities, and now this is happening more and more often. What does this promise the Earth? Perhaps the climate will indeed return to the Cenozoic era, when there were subtropics in Siberia.
