Word: arctics
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Everyone knows ozone is necessary for protection from the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays. The phenomenon of Arctic spring, when ozone levels over the Arctic suddenly drop, leaving a hole, is also well-known. But scientists still wonder exactly what ozone does, how it works, and where it goes. What controls the amount of ozone in our atmosphere...
With an eye for answering these and other questions, McKay Associate Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry Daniel J. Jacob has developed a model which he says explains the sudden loss of tropospheric ozone over the Arctic each spring, and possibly over one area of the equatorial Pacific...
...Using Arctic ozone data, Jacob was able to prove that a reaction catalyzed by bromine was involved in the destruction of tropospheric ozone...
While most concern focuses on birds and mammals, the oil may have harmed less visible -- and less photogenic -- creatures such as the sand eel, which has already suffered in recent years from overharvesting. The eels are an important food for arctic terns and other birds that breed on the Shetlands during the summer. "The birds had been weakened in previous seasons here," says Tim Thomas, a wildlife officer for Britain's Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. "If the sand eel does not reproduce well this year because of the oil, the birds could be devastated...
...worst of the poisoned sites is Novaya Zemlya, two Arctic islands used as a nuclear-weapons test range. Already contaminated by bomb fallout, the islands were turned into a nuclear garbage bin. The Russians admit they dropped as many as 17,000 barrels of radioactive waste into the surrounding seas since 1964. Sailors reportedly shot holes in some of the barrels when they failed to sink...