Home ›› 14 Jul 2022 ›› Opinion
A scientist recently claimed that he'd discovered a gargantuan hole in the ozone layer that first appeared above the tropics in the 1980s but went unacknowledged until now. However, upon his research being published, the scientist received swift criticism from experts who flagged his study as deeply flawed.
"I am surprised that this study was published at all in its current form," Martyn Chipperfield, a professor of atmospheric chemistry at the University of Leeds in England, told the Science Media Centre(opens in new tab), an independent U.K.-based press office that works with researchers, journalists and policymakers to disseminate accurate scientific information.
"The claim in this research of such large ozone changes in the tropics have not been apparent in other studies, which makes me very suspicious," Chipperfield said. "Science should never depend on just one study, and this new work needs careful verification before it can be accepted as fact."
The author of the new study, Qing-Bin Lu, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, said that he disagrees with Chipperfield's and others' critiques. "In my opinion, these criticisms are groundless and cannot stand from the review of scientific literature," he told Live Science in an email.
The controversial report was published July 5 in the journal AIP Advances. The study went through the journal's standard peer-review process, through which an independent reviewer determined it was suitable for publication, A.T. Charlie Johnson, Jr., deputy editor of AIP Advances, told Live Science in an email. The journal's editors then determined that the work was newsworthy enough to be highlighted as a featured article on their website.
"To our knowledge, we have not received any communication from the outside community questioning its validity," Johnson said. "We encourage readers and researchers to contact the authors whenever possible to discuss potential technical deficiencies, so they may be addressed in corrections in the literature or in comments and responses." Or, alternatively, readers may contact the journal directly, he said. At that time, the journal would work to validate any claims made about the work, request an explanation or response from the author and correct the literature, if necessary.
Ozone — a gas made up of O3, or oxygen atoms bound together in groups of three — forms in Earth's upper atmosphere. Most ozone sits in the stratosphere, the atmospheric layer that lies 6 to 31 miles (10 to 50 kilometers) above the planet's surface. There, the gas acts as a kind of sunscreen, shielding Earth from the sun's powerful ultraviolet (UV) rays.
In the 1980s, scientists found that long-lived atmospheric pollutants called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) break down into chlorine and bromine when exposed to UV rays beyond the ozone layer, according to NASA's Earth Observatory. These reactive elements tear O3 molecules apart and thus thin out regions of the ozone layer, creating "holes," primarily over Antarctica, where the frigid atmospheric conditions allow ozone-shredding reactions to unfold very efficiently.
Conventionally, an ozone hole is defined as a region where the ozone concentration dips below 220 "Dobson Units" — a measure of the number of ozone molecules in a given column of air that stretches from the planet's surface to space. The discovery of ozone holes prompted the passage of the 1987 Montreal Protocol, an international treaty aimed at phasing out the production of ozone-depleting chemicals such as CFCs, and now, the ozone layer is on the road to recovery, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
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