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Massive Australia wildfires increased Antarctic ozone hole: study
Smoke from monster wildfires in Australia caused a chemical reaction that widened the ozone hole 10 percent, researchers said.
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This handout photo taken on December 8, 2021 and obtained on December 10 from the Western Australian Department of Fire and Emergency Services shows a firefighter at work near Margaret River. (AFP/Sean Blocksidge/Western Australia Department of Fire and Emergency Services)
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moke from monster wildfires in Australia caused a chemical reaction that widened the ozone hole 10 percent, researchers said Wednesday, raising fears that increasing forest fires could delay the recovery of Earth's atmospheric protection against deadly UV radiation.
Severe summer heat and drought helped drive the deadly "Black Summer" fires from late 2019 to early 2020, which destroyed vast swathes of eucalyptus forest and enveloped Sydney and other cities in smoke and ash for months.
Previous research concluded that the more than one million tonnes of smoke pumped into the atmosphere by the fires prolonged the Antarctic ozone hole that opens up above Antarctica each spring.
In a new study, published in the journal Nature, researchers in the United States and China identified a newly identified chemical reaction in the wildfire smoke that increased the depletion of ozone -- the atmospheric gas that reduces the amount of ultraviolet radiation reaching the Earth's surface.
Susan Solomon, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who led the research, said that this reaction had chipped away at the edges of the ozone hole over Antarctica, expanding the hole by more than two million square kilometres (770,000 square miles) -- 10 percent of its area compared to the previous year.
"These chemical reactions are happening right on the edge of the region where the ozone hole happens," she said, explaining that the "particles give it a little extra push".
The ozone hole was first created by human pollution -- particularly chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) emitted from many refrigerators -- but in recent decades, a global agreement on these chemicals has given the ozone layer a chance to heal.
