What's happened to the Ozone?
 

Editor: Almost forgotten in the Global Warming movement has been been any discussion about the ozone layer. 

The Canadian Community News monitors an international blog of scientists, mathematicians, economists and engineers who communicate on a daily basis regarding a wide range of topics. 

From time to time these active researchers send through something of interest to the general public.  We'd like to bring you some research results in simple form that were received today from Forrest Mims.  It shows the interesting interplay between Scientists, both inside and outside organizations that you recognize immediately. 

The lesson is:  This is how science progresses.  It moves in deliberate steps over time.

I've been measuring the ozone layer here in South Texas most days since 1989 (see www.forrestmims.org). My data agrees closely with that from the series of ozone satellites launched since then--closely enough to have found errors in 3 of them. (I published the first error in NATURE.) [ED Note:  Nature is the top Science Journal in the world]

During the past summer, the total ozone abundance fell around 6 percent when compared to the past 7-8 years. In fact, it reached levels not seen since the post-Pinatubo ozone decline.

I notified NASA about this, and the scientist I contacted seemed unaware of this. I requested the global mean for my latitude (29.6 N), and he kindly sent the data (for 30-35 N)

These data showed a 3.5 percent or so decline during the spring of 2008 when compared to the prior 4 years (all OMI data).

(next column)

13/01/2009 04:19 PM

(continued)

This finding would have attracted considerable attention 5 years ago. But now it seems that the ozone layer is of much less interest than global warming, even though the former is easily measured and studied and the latter is not.

I do not have an explanation for why the ozone layer declined so sharply this past spring-summer. But it is certainly obvious.

As soon as time permits, I'll post a plot. If more time is available, I'll write this up and submit it for publication.

Best regards,

Forrest

New arrivals exempt

^{for world news, books, sports, movies ...}