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Save the Ozone, Save Earth!

Have you been happy to have experienced more rainfall in your area than usual, of late? Have you more frequently used the expressions “it’s too cold” or “it’s too hot” than you used to ever before? Have you been a witness to the changing weather pattern in your part of the world, of late? Have you been reading about frequent hurricanes and cyclones in newspapers?

Deepak Nagpal
Have you been happy to have experienced more rainfall in your area than usual, of late? Have you more frequently used the expressions “it’s too cold” or “it’s too hot” than you used to ever before? Have you been a witness to the changing weather pattern in your part of the world, of late? Have you been reading about frequent hurricanes and cyclones in newspapers? There are a number of such similar questions and if you answer in the affirmative to any one of these, then do not be amused or surprised! Because all this signals a change in “your world”, and certainly, it’s not for “your good”! You would want to ask why? The answer is simple: the climate is changing and it would change the way you survive, not live, forever!Global warming – the term has become so common now that it no more needs to be explained – is slowly but steadily changing the face of the world. The face, I say, because glaciers, rivers, ice caps, land etc represent what the earth means to us, and probably to some aliens sitting in another, far away part of the universe. The glaciers are melting, rivers are overflowing, sea level is rising, coastal land is vanishing, ice shelves as huge as 19 square miles are breaking apart (in Canada’s arctic) – what more of a proof does one need to establish and believe in the concept of ‘Climate Change’ and ‘Global Warming’. Even eminent scientists of the world – including those on the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change – have said that this is their last bit of opportunity to save this planet, our home, if at all we want to. But there are still some, especially those in power across the world, who behave like an ostrich and prefer to dig their head inside the earth in the fatal belief that they are safe and the worst shall pass. However, to their disbelief, no such thing will happen. The worst will come and wipe out, if not everything, then at least a major part of the mankind’s legacy built over centuries. Steven Spielberg may not have exaggerated the fear when he made the movie, ‘The Day After Tomorrow’. While part of the climate change can be blamed on natural factors, much of it has to do with ‘we humans’. In our zest to bring change and improve, we have forgotten that earth has a limited capability, to change, at least in terms of the speed with which this change is being brought about. Population growth, massive expansion of cities, towns and villages, shrinking of wildlife habitat, deforestation etc are all inflicting irreversible damage on our sensitive earth and Mother Nature. While climate change and global warming can still be described as something that we started seriously worrying about of late, there’s one thing that we knew of much much before any such worries grew. Ozone, Hole and Montreal Protocol Depletion of the much important, life giver Ozone Layer was known to man decades ago. Ozone, in the simplest of terms, is a gas which is present in the upper atmosphere – some 10 km to 50 km above the earth’s surface. It filters out ultraviolet light, also called UV rays, from the sun that can be harmful to most forms of life in large doses. It also acts as a greenhouse gas, absorbing some of the infrared energy emitted by the earth. If ozone does not do what it is supposed to, then it would mean more skin cancers and cataracts in humans, lower plant productivity and deterioration in certain forms of marine life. This gas is constantly formed and reformed in our atmosphere, due to natural factors and reactions. And it is present both as a ‘good gas’ in stratosphere and ‘bad gas’ in troposphere. In stratosphere, ozone acts as a shield to protect earth`s surface from the sun`s harmful UV radiation. In troposphere, ozone is a harmful pollutant that causes damage to lung tissue and plants. The amount of good and bad ozone in the atmosphere depends on a balance between processes that create the gas and those that destroy it. An upset in this balance implies serious consequences for life on Earth. Scientists are already discovering proof of changes occurring in ozone levels – the ‘bad’ tropospheric ozone is increasing in the air we breathe, and the ‘good’ stratospheric ozone is decreasing in our protective ozone layer. The amount of ozone in the stratosphere has been waning mostly because of emissions of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and similar chlorinated and brominated organic molecules, which cause depletion of the gas. Among the most common Ozone Depleting Substances (ODS) are CFCs used in refrigerators, air-conditioning units foam products and aerosol sprays and halons used in fire extinguishers. The rapid depletion in ozone has even created a ‘hole’ in the protective layer. While there’s no ‘hole’ in the ozone layer as such (ozone is a gas and it is technically not possible to create a hole in it), its depletion in many regions has been so severe that it has come to be known as, for instance, the ‘Antarctic Ozone Hole’. To understand it better, let’s take the example of a ‘leaky bucket’. Keep pouring water in a bucket, which has a small hole, at normal pressure and the water level will not change much. However, as soon as you increase the pressure, the hole becomes bigger and water level starts receding no matter how much water you put in it. Similar is the case with the ozone layer. If ozone loss exceeds the ozone creation, it leads to the creation of a hole in the layer. Putting additional ODS such as CFCs into the atmosphere increases the depletion of ozone. Ozone leaks out at a faster rate through the larger holes than it is being created. As a result, the level of gas shielding us from UV radiation goes down. Over the past few decades, scientists have noticed an additional mechanism in parts of the Antarctic and Arctic that rapidly destroys ozone. Over the North and South Poles during their respective winters, the stratosphere cools to very cold temperatures and polar stratospheric clouds form. In the polar stratosphere, almost all of the chlorine is in the form of inactive or ‘reservoir’ gases such as hydrogen chloride and chlorine nitrate that do not react with ozone or each other. However, chemical reactions of these ‘reservoir’ chlorine gases can take place on the polar stratospheric cloud particle surfaces, transforming the chlorine gases into very reactive forms that rapidly destroy ozone. This ‘polar chemistry’ on the stratospheric cloud particles has caused major depletion in the ozone concentrations over Antarctica and the Arctic. In fact, ozone levels drop so low in spring over Antarctica that scientists describe this loss as the ‘Antarctic Ozone Hole’. This was something the world didn’t ignore and opened the ‘Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer’ for signatures on September 16, 1987. The signatories to the Protocol committed to cut down and eliminate the use of CFCs. Amendments were made to the Protocol later to ban CFC production after 1995. So far, 191 countries have ratified the treaty and these were labelled as ‘developed’ or ‘developing’ based on several economic factors. The distinction allowed for different regulations to be applied to the participating nations. Developing countries were allowed a grace period of 10 to 15 years to comply with reduction and elimination rules over developed countries. In order to guard against illegal and unethical ‘behind-closed-doors’ trading of ozone depleting chemicals, provisions were made in the laws that set rules against trading ODS with nations that were non-compliant or non-signatory to the treaty. While efforts have been made at international and national level, there is an immediate need for each one of us to understand that some of our daily-use products are destroying the ozone layer with or without our knowledge. CFCs present in our daily-use-products like deodorants, fridges and air-conditioners pose indirect threat to our very own existence. So it becomes imperative for us to care for these household products and make sure the CFCs they contain never get released into the atmosphere. While using any of these or similar products, we should always remember one thing: a single CFC molecule can destroy 100,000 ozone molecules.Climate Worries Being concerned about climate change is not something to be laughed at. Recent scientific studies have come out with worrying predictions – that global warming is likely to boost the number and power of the strongest tropical cyclones and hurricanes. "As the seas warm, the ocean has more energy to convert to tropical cyclone wind," say authors of the study. Also, the incredibly rapid pace at which Arctic ice shelves in Canada are disappearing is an early indicator of the "very substantial changes" that global warming will impose on all mankind, scientists believe. As a matter of fact, five ice shelves along Ellesmere Island in Canada’s Far North, which are over 4,000 years old, had shrunk by 23 percent this summer alone. "Climate models indicate that the greatest changes, the most severe changes, will happen earliest in the highest northern latitudes," says Warwick Vincent, director of the Centre for Northern Studies at Laval University in Quebec. "This will be the starting point for more substantial changes throughout the rest of the planet.... Our indicators are showing us exactly what the climate models predict," he adds. Scientists are not just looking into the future to study the effects of global warming, which will most likely be more damaging weather extremes such as hurricanes, cyclones and floods. They are also looking into the past: a new research of climate conducted on the Northern Hemisphere has revealed that temperature there has been warmer from past decade as compared to any time in the last 1,300 years. Some evidence has further pointed out that the comparison may go back till 1,700 years as well. In the light of all this, it becomes very important for us to realise this – if we don’t change, the earth will change! (September 16 every year is celebrated as the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer.)