After Cooling by Eric Dean Wilson

Author:Eric Dean Wilson [Wilson, Eric Dean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-07-06T00:00:00+00:00

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As the parties began their negotiations in Montreal, a second team of scientists returned to Antarctica to prove a link between CFCs and the hole. One of the scientists, James Anderson, a prominent researcher at Harvard, had developed a new machine to detect the presence of chlorine monoxide in very small amounts. Evidence of chlorine monoxide in the stratosphere would mean evidence that CFCs were shredding the ozone layer.

In order to capture direct evidence from the air, the scientists employed four Vietnam War veterans to pilot a Lockheed ER-2—an evolved version of the U-2 spy plane—that was able to pierce the stratosphere. The planes were delicate, however, and the pilots had never flown in such harsh winds and temperatures, at times reaching −130°F. The Antarctic mission, one pilot later recalled, was far more dangerous than any combat he’d experienced in the war. At thirteen miles above sea level and in such extreme temperatures, the plane’s engine could easily fail, and if it did, the pilot would have no conceivable way of surviving. Even if the plane were somehow maneuvered into a successful emergency landing, the pilot would then be stranded in the Antarctic wild. To make matters more precarious, there was little room in the aircraft for the chlorine monoxide detector, so the scientists would have to strap it to the left wing of the plane. The pilot would operate it with a simple lever. The odds of everything working as planned were doubtful. Everyone hoped for the best.

The pilots took turns flying into the polar vortex, where, theoretically, CFCs were rapidly turning ozone into chlorine monoxide. The first few trials were duds. The detector malfunctioned, and it was unclear whether it would work in subzero temperatures at all. But the problem was diagnosed quickly—a simple mechanical error—and, within a few days, the pilots flew a total of twelve missions through the polar vortex, each time risking their safety and lives for the collective safety and lives of the planet.

While spy planes flew through the ozone hole, Mario Molina, now working in NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, had answered a pressing question about the hole’s chemistry. Sherry Rowland had found that the icy surface of the polar stratospheric clouds, when warmed by the sun’s rays, rapidly released frozen stores of chlorine monoxide. Now Molina found that with nitric acid still frozen in the cloud and little atomic oxygen around, chlorine atoms, when split from their oxygen partners by UV light, tended to bond with other chlorine atoms, a reaction that was rare in warmer circumstances. The result, over several weeks, was the obliteration of ozone molecules faster and farther than anyone had ever observed. In tandem, Molina’s work and the new data from the second Antarctic mission could effectively end the scientific uncertainty around what was causing the hole and why. With his machine’s data, James Anderson charted the loss of stratospheric ozone against the rise in chlorofluorocarbon chemicals. The causation was as clear as it would ever be: CFCs destroyed ozone.

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