Ozone depletion/ global warming question?

Question

I need help with a homework question for my environmental science class.

Explain how ozone depletion can be enhanced by global warming.

Please help me!

Thank You!

Answer 1

There is no direct correlation between ozone depletion and global warming.

Global warming is an enhanced greenhouse effect; it is where greenhouse gases (CO2, water vapor, methane...) are keeping more heat in the atmosphere.

Ozone depletion is caused by ozone-depleting chemicals that destroy the ozone that protects us from harmful UV rays.

One way that you could connect the two is that CFCs are greenhouse gases and ozone depleting chemicals.  But CFCs are banned in most places by the Montreal Protocol

Answer 2

Ozone depletion is separate from global warming. Ozone is to protect us from UV radiation and there's no heat in UV. The heat you feel when out in the sun is Infrared.

Ozone depletion wasn't the result of CFCs but the chlorine in CFCs. The hole discovered in the ozone in Antarctica coincided with the eruption of  Mount Erebus and is continually to spew tons of chlorine in to the atmosphere every year. CFCs are between five and six times heavier than air.

Edit : Here is a site that might help with a debate or at least provoke different thinking. Click on "View all articles"

Answer 3

Ozone is made by radiation from the sun.  It doesn't have anything to do with global warming.

Answer 4

There is no direct relationship but they theorize that greenhouse gases may trap heat lower in the atmosphere, causing the stratosphere to cool. When it's cooler the CFCs already in the stratosphere do more damage to the ozone. It's unproven if the stratosphere has cooled but that's the theory. More UV radiation is admitted thru an ozone hole so that might have some effect as well but I'm not aware of any data on that.

Please take care while reading the second link, the Union of Concerned Scientists page linked has some laughably inaccurate summaries of global warming but the part about ozone depletion agrees with actual scientific research.

Answer 5

It's subtle so you have to think about it because it involves the different behavior of greenhouse gases in different layers of the atmosphere, and the most efficient mechanism of ozone removal from the stratosphere.  Most of what i will say next you can find references for by googling the following strings:

"polar stratospheric clouds ozone depletion"

"stratospheric cooling global warming"

Fact 1:  Increasing CO2 concentrations on the stratosphere lead to cooling, not warming, in the upper layers of the atmosphere.  This cooling has been measured, and you can find any number of websites giving decent explanations for the process.

Fact 2:  The most efficient method of removing ozone from the stratosphere involves heterogeneous surface catalytical processes on ice crystals at very low temperatures.  (Susan Solomon won the National Science medal for figuring this out, by the way.)  The Antarctic ozone hole forms because in the springtime, the sun shining on polar stratospheric clouds (composed of ice crystals with acid condensed on them) activates the process, essentially scrubbing ozone from the atmosphere until the ice crystals evaporate and the photochemistry reforms ozone.  Typically, the boreal winter stratospheric temperatures don't get low enough to condense the required acid onto the stratospheric clouds so the ozone loss in the arctic isn't as dramatic as in the Antarctic.  

Combining these two known processes, what *might* happen is that the stratosphere might cool enough due to the rise in concentration of longwave radiatively active gases so that the polar stratospheric clouds will persist for longer in the austral springtime and the temperatures in the Arctic stratosphere will be low enough for the heterogeneous chemistry to occur.  Should either of these conditions occur, it would lead to a fairly large increase in global ozone decline, with the formation of an Arctic ozone hole particularly damaging (most of the world's grains are produced in regions where increased UV in the springtime would harm seedlings).  

I know, too complicated.  Science is icky.  There are better explanations around.

Answer 6

the are totally different. Ozone depletion is caused by cfcs and with it uv radiation will increase which has nothing to do with global warming.