Word: layering
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Soon after assuming his current duties last June, Hoyle -- along with Staff Writer Michael D. Lemonick, who wrote this week's report -- became intrigued by plans of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and other agencies to investigate a disturbing hole in the ozone layer high above Antarctica. At the same time, scientists were growing increasingly alarmed about the ominous evidence of the warming of the earth's climate, caused by the so-called greenhouse effect. Says Hoyle: "When we heard about the NASA Antarctica expedition, we knew we had an awfully good peg for a look at changing weather...
...paraphrase that famous remark about the weather, everyone talks about the ozone layer, but no one does anything about it. Though evidence has mounted that man-made compounds called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are destroying the screen of ozone-enriched air that helps shield the earth from the sun's dangerous radiation, the world's nations have been slow to develop a consensus on how to cope with the problem...
...overall as much as 7% of the ozone belt, which stretches six to 30 miles above the earth, has already been destroyed. Moreover, researchers have found evidence of "holes" in the shield, including one above Antarctica that approaches the size of the continental U.S. As the world's ozone layer deteriorates, the sun's radiation could lead to a dramatic increase in skin cancer and cataracts, along with a lowered resistance to infection. It could damage plant life, both directly and as a result of a general warming trend; that warming could lead to a disastrous rise in sea levels...
Representatives from 35 countries met in Montreal last week to hammer out an agreement that would limit man-made damage to the atmosphere's protective ozone layer. As they deliberated, the British journal Nature published a study offering the strongest evidence so far that man-made compounds called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are the culprits. Crofton Farmer, principal author of the study and an atmospheric physicist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., reported that data gathered last year in the Antarctic are "entirely consistent" with the premise that CFCs -- used in refrigeration devices and as ingredients in plastic foams...
Their interest is hardly academic. The ozone-enriched air, which stretches from six to 30 miles up, protects life on earth from dangerous solar ultraviolet radiation (UV). Although ozone, whose molecules are made of three oxygen atoms, absorbs UV radiation, even the amount that now penetrates the ozone layer can cause skin cancers and has been linked to cataracts. With less ozone, these disorders will increase; with no ozone at all, the UV could be deadly. Scientists have long suspected that decomposing CFCs in the stratosphere release chlorine, which acts as a catalyst, breaking ozone molecules apart...