MIT researchers have discovered a formerly unrecognized 'ozone-depleting' chemical process.
Wildfires can propel smoke into the stratosphere, where the particles linger for more than a year. These particles, while stuck there, can cause chemical processes that erode the Earth's protectiveThe study, partly funded by NASA, focused on the smoke from the "Black Summer" megafire in eastern Australia, which burnt from December 2019 until January 2020.
Furthermore, the fires appear to have impacted the polar areas, eating away at the edges of the ozone hole above Antarctica, according to the researchers' model. By the end of 2020, smoke from the Australian wildfires had increased the size of the Antarctic ozone hole by 2.5 million square kilometers, or 10 percent more than the previous year.
"But that didn't explain all the changes that were observed in the stratosphere," Solomon said. "There was a whole bunch of chlorine-related chemistry that was totally out of whack."The current study found that chlorine monoxide concentrations increased while hydrochloric acid concentrations decreased noticeably in the atmosphere months after the wildfires. Still, Chlorine cannot destroy ozone while it is bonded to other elements such as HCl.
Although this reaction with HCl is likely the primary route by which wildfires reduce ozone, Solomon hypothesizes that other chlorine-containing molecules may be drifting in the stratosphere that wildfires could unleash.
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