The Ozone Hole -- a Mystery Reborn?

Preliminary Conclusions: Pope et al. was a good experiment! they managed to synthesize ClOOCl in unprecedented yields and purity However, their Cl2 correction by “Gaussian fitting” seems to underestimate the ClOOCl absorption in the atmospherically important long wavelength tail of the spectrum. If we can confirm our new experiment then there is no new mystery: the traditional polar ozone loss cycles are sufficient to explain the ozone hole. What lies ahead: Verify our results, quantify matrix effects, and attempt to obtain “absolute” (background corrected) spectra to 450 nm Compare results to all previous studies and try to understand and unambiguously identify the reasons for discrepancies. THIS MATERIAL IS VERY PRELIMINARY: THE EXPERIMENT WAS COMPLETED < 2 WEEKS AGO ! More than 20 years after the discovery of the ozone hole, a new laboratory experiment by Pope et al. suggesting much smaller absorption cross sections of ClOOCl (Figure 3) calls into question our understanding of polar ozone depletion.