What happened to the ozone hole?

[Indiogene]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20100506/sc_livescience/whateverhappenedtotheholeintheozonelayer

25 yrs. ago today, British scientists made an announcement on the earth was in grave danger by ozone depletion, like the hole above Antarctica. The news media went berserk and everyone was scared of the sun will burn us up to a crisp by now, but today it's not a scary but old news story. The northernmost reaches of the ozone hole has turned away from the southern tip of South America (Cape Horn and Tierra del Fuego), the only human-habited parts to be studied of the cancerous high UV-ray ozone hole.

New atmospheric studies found ozone depletion has slowed down in the last decade, and the causes are suprisingly in part natural in Earth's ancient history: extreme cold in the earth's upper atmosphere and flactuating levels of solar radiation in the two polar seasons (very cold winters and 24-hour daylight summers) regulates ozone growth. 20 yrs. ago, the Montreal Protocol banned the use of ozone-destroying Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and the results shown the treaty worked out like planned, by a simple act of removing CFCs from aerosol cans isn't hard.

The article's picture shows Los Angeles a week ago when temps. were very cool without a bit of ozone smog. New theories on why the L.A. basin is very hazy than any other part of the world: It may be water vapor caused by the Pacific Ocean, dust from the nearby Mojave Desert and climatology is the reason why the L.A. basin is hazy, not 20 million people's cars and factories. Smog in the area is unlike in 1945, 1968 or 1991 (or the infamous summers of smog in 1954-56). I sense a climatological pattern in smog alert reports peaking in certain years when in 1984, 1995 and 2006 had no smog alert report in the whole year.

Cal. has the strictest air pollution controls of anywhere in the US and the developed world, and how our last 3 governors made strong commitments to clean the "dirtiest" air in Southern Cal. and the Central valley, notably warm climate basins trap inversion layer and wind-blown dust. I'm not denying that the ozone hole or air pollution exists, I believe all the implanted tougher environmental regulations and decreased media interest is what made us "forget" about the crisis in 2010. What you all think?

[Belial]

It moved to California

[Torgo]

I can't find it right now, but I have seen a paper that showed the concentration of CFCs in the atmosphere over the last two decades and showed that they have finally started to decline, and that after a lag time the ozone concentration has begun to increase. By banning CFCs, we stopped the destruction of the layer.

[Indiogene]

Maybe the reason for less smog reports and decreased air pollution over the city of L.A. proper was the expansion of the metro area eastward and southward since the end of WWII, when the majority of factories were constructed and the automobile ownership rates increased, Los Angelenos are said to have 3 cars per person in the 1970s &' 80s when by the early 1990s, the EPA gotten tougher with the South Coast Air Quality Board to combat regional smog.

Today, in central sections of L.A. you had a sudden rise in pedestrian traffic, bicyclists going to or back from work and public transportation from local RTA busses to the completed Metrolink mass transit trains, you find less dependence on automobile driving in the inner-city though and most of the smog was pushed north or northeast into the San Gabriel/San Bernardino mountains and foothills, as well the Inland Empire region (esp. western Riverside county) is said to have the worst air quality in America.

[Dusk_Nightmare]

It moved to California

[Guest]

Nothing - its still there.

Br Cornelius

[Doc Socks Junior]

The media just moved on. No need to worry about it after that

[Finity]

It will slowly "grow" back without CFC's eating it.