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I didn't see a temperature for when this might become a problem. Does anyone have that?


https://science.sciencemag.org/content/337/6096/835/tab-pdf

That's the ref in the paper. It's a bit confusing because they're looking at chemical processes taking place at 15-20km altitude. Temps there are around -55C maybe, 200K).

They plot changes for activation of the process, but I don't have enough knowledge about it to understand the implications. The bottom axis of their graph runs from 195K - 210K though so clearly it's not a big delta. They seem much more interested in the amount of water vapor at altitude.

The other thing is that it seems like the process has a fairly short cycle time. By which I mean they mention changes on the order of days. When I think about ozone holes I think mainly in the context of decades.

So I'm not sure how much the mention of warming and ozone loss in the OP paper was a 'hey that might be of note,' or was a more substantially linked relationship.

(I kind of wonder if pole reversal/magnetic field weakening or solar events could play into the loss of ozone during the extinction in the original paper?)

The paper makes this statement at the end:

Last, we emphasize that because chlorine ac- tivation depends exponentially on water vapor and temperature, and in turn that the forcing of climate may well control the convective injec- tion of water into the lower stratosphere, the idea that ozone “recovery” is in sight because we have controlled chlorofluorocarbons and halon release is a potential misjudgment.


Ok so I think the parameter you want to be looking for is the temperature (not necessarily at altitude) that results in some particular amount (ppmv) of water vapor at altitude. With the understanding that the hotter it is at altitude the worse the mechanism is for ozone.




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