New ozone study raises concerns

The planet's ozone layer may be thinning over earth’s heavily populated areas. Robert Lee Hotz at the Wall Street Journal reports, "In a new analysis, scientists detect shrinking of the planet’s protective shield at lower levels of the stratosphere over Earth’s nonpolar regions. Part of Earth’s protective ozone shield may be thinning over the most heavily populated regions of the globe, even as an ozone hole over Antarctica continues to mend". ACOM scientist Rolando Garcia, a key developer of the WACCM model who was not involved in the published study, found the results to be convincing.

The published paper is "Evidence for a continuous decline in lower stratospheric ozone offsetting ozone layer recovery," in the scientific journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

Citation: Atmos. Chem. Phys., 18, 1379-1394, 2018. https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-1379-2018

February 6, 2018