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| Susan Solomon, Ph.D., delivered the Kavli Foundation Lecture at the ACS 242nd National Meeting & Exposition. (Photo by the American Chemical Society) |
DENVER— Even after many decades of studying ozone and its loss from our atmosphere miles above the Earth, plenty of mysteries and surprises remain, including an unexpected loss of ozone over the Arctic this past winter, an authority on the topic said here today. She also discussed chemistry and climate change, including some proposed ideas to “geoengineer” the Earth’s climate to slow down or reverse global warming. The talk happened at the 242nd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), being held this week.
In a Kavli Foundation Innovations in Chemistry Lecture, Susan Solomon, Ph.D., of the University of Colorado, Boulder, said that the combined efforts of scientists, the public, industry and policy makers to stop ozone depletion is one of science’s greatest success stories, but unanswered questions remain. And ozone is still disappearing.
“We’re no longer producing the primary chemicals — chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) — that caused the problem, but CFCs have very long lifetimes in our atmosphere, and so we’ll have ozone depletion for several more decades,” said Solomon. “There are still some remarkable mysteries regarding exactly how these chlorine compounds behave in Antarctica — and it’s amazing that we still have much to learn, even after studying ozone for so long.”
