“Don’t do anything to the stratospheric ozone – that is bad,” were the wise words of Prof Dudley Shallcross in his lecture “How much can the biosphere offset a warming world: Recent atmospheric observations and their potential impact."
“Don’t do anything to the stratospheric ozone – that is bad,” were the wise words of Prof Dudley Shallcross in his lecture “How much can the biosphere offset a warming world: Recent atmospheric observations and their potential impact."
at Rhodes University last week. Shallcross is the winner of numerous awards for his teaching and research in the sciences and is currently the professor of atomspheric chemistry at Bristol University in the UK.
To explain what is known as the Goldilocks Effect for dummies the reason that the earth is at the temperature that it is, without it being too hot or too cold to sustain life Shallcross uses the Granny example.
He allowed the audience to picture a granny in a rocking chair with knitting needles in her hand (representing the earth) sitting in front of a heater (the sun).
With the granny being the perfect distance away from the heater the approximate temperature of the earth should be around 10°C.
However, the earth is a more complicated organism than your average granny and is subject to certain instabilities such as ice and clouds which disrupt the temperature and result in the earth receiving only 70% of the sun’s energy.
This is equivalent to a small child or animal standing in front of your granny and blocking the heat from the heater.
The earth, instead of picking up a blanket, warms itself with greenhouse gases to raise it’s temperature to approximately 16° Celsius.
The earth, however, is heating up no thanks to the contribution of various, insoluble, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) released by human materials, and even plants, that overload the biosphere.
The problem occurs with the destruction of the stratospheric ozone which then increases the amount of harmful radiation that reaches the surface of the earth and heats it up.
But before you start making plans to build your underground bunker there is hope at the end of road in the recent effects of increasing aerosol in the biosphere.
Aerosol are condensible materials such as clouds formations which help cool the atmosphere. The cooling effect of monoterpene, aerosol’s precursor, was found to be much larger than previously thought, by almost half a degree more.
Another huge discovery that Shallcross mentions is the new-found ability of isoprene to recycle, and not consume, hydroxyl radicals (OH).
This is of major interest at the moment as the increase of OH results in a shorter lifespan for many dangerous greenhouse gases.
It is clear that the warming world is still an issue of major concern, but perhaps no longer as an icon alluding to our impending doom, but rather as a scientific frontier ripe with new discoveries and innovations.
