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The Ozone Hole Takes Its Revenge with Climate Change

Remember the ozone hole? It's teaming up with CO2 to heat the planet.

Some of us are old enough to remember when the ozone hole was the environmental scare. CFCs from our aerosol spray bottles and old air conditioning units were getting into the atmosphere and breaking down the ozone layer over the South Pole, which is crucial for blocking ultraviolet radiation from getting to human skin and causing cancer. At certain points, the hole spread large enough to expose some parts of Australia and New Zealand to bonus UV rays. Since the development of less-dangerous HCFCs and the signing of the CFC emissions-limiting Montreal Protocol in 1987, the hole has shrank considerably. In 2012 the hole was at its smallest size since 2002. But it still exists.

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The ‘80s also had the Greenhouse Effect, climate change’s early warning, but as far as global eco-crises are concerned, the ozone hole was the headline story for years and years. Since the rise of climate change as the dominant crisis and the curbing of ozone-destroying chemicals, the hole has become seldom discussed in the mainstream. It’s mostly just assumed the problem is fixed. And as far as the human population needing permanent SPF 100 sunscreen, that’s not a terrible assumption. But stuff in this great world of ours tends to be connected, and the ozone hole has significant ramifications for the changing climate.

According to a new study in Geophysical Research Letters, it’s likely that the ozone hole will increase global warming by about one-tenth the amount of warming attributed to CO2. This is due to the hole shifting the southern-hemisphere jet stream further toward the south and, according to the models used in the study, the effect is to pull clouds toward the South Pole. Cloud cover over the polar region is less effective at blocking radiation, so the net effect is an increase in radiation hitting the Earth. In total, we should see an additional 0.25 watts per square meter being absorbed by the planet, which adds up to a good blast of extra heat.

This goes against previous research suggesting that the ozone hole will have a net cooling effect. Instead, we have the opposite; “A negative radiative forcing is what you’d expect when the ozone is depleted, but our research shows that there is a positive net radiative effect during the Antarctic summer,” Kevin Grise, the study’s lead author, tells Nature. Meanwhile, coal burning is up 50 percent worldwide, which is an impressive measure of humankind’s commitment to fixing anything, let alone a crisis most humans think is already solved.

Reach this writer at michaelb@motherboard.tv.