ozone (Page 2)

Ozone may prove the key to the link between high temperature (they kind caused by climate change) and the increased risk of death from heart disease or stroke.

Rresearchers studied almost 100 million people in 95 different geographical areas across the US during the summer months of June to September, and looked at health and weather pollution between 1987 and 2000. During this period, 4 million heart attacks or strokes occurred, and when the authors plotted daily deaths against fluctuations in temperature during one day, they found that ozone was a common link: the higher the ozone level, the higher was the risk of cardiovascular death due to high temperatures.
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Does Ozone contribute to global warming? New research shows that it could be a bigger factor in climate change than scientists have realized.

Ozone gas occurs naturally in the atmosphere. It’s formed in the stratosphere by the action of solar radiation on oxygen. It is also caused by man-made pollution. Ozone absorbs part of the ultraviolet radiation from the sun, reducing the amount of dangerous solar radiation that reaches the earth.

When ozone stays close to the ground, it damages plants so they can no longer absorb carbon dioxide as well as they used to. In BBC News, Paul Rincon quotes researcher Peter Cox as saying, “Ozone could be twice as important as we previously thought as a driver of climate change.”

Art credit: gimp-savvy.com
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Good news: the ozone hole is closing, due to a 1987 international agreement that banned the use of ozone-destroying chemicals. Even better news: this is good for global warming too, since chloroflurocarbons (CFCs?which were once used in air conditioners, refrigerators and as propellants in some cleaning products) are also major greenhouse gases.

If chloroflurocarbons had continued to build up in the atmosphere during the past 20 years, it’s estimated that we would have twice as much global warming by 2010 than we actually will. That’s the equivalent of 10-12 years at our current rate of CO2 emissions.
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Finally, some good news about the environment: the ozone hole over the Antarctic is closing and may disappear by the year 2050 because of the reduction in emissions of ozone-depleting gases.

What does ozone do for us, anyway? It protects us from excess radiation from the sun. The magnetic shield around the earth does the same thing, but this may be disrupted as the poles shift magnetic positions (something that happens regularly and is in progress right now), so we need a sound ozone layer.

However, there are still old refrigerators and air conditioners being used, mainly in the US and Canada, that give off high levels of ozone-destroying fluorocarbons. While these types of appliances are now illegal, there are still old ones in use.
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