Unit 2 Research Paper 1: Global Warming
During the last fifty years, two environmental issues have received significant attention: global warming and the hole in the ozone layer. As scientists have investigated these two environmental phenomena some have made some effort to show that these two effects are somehow related. In this research paper I will further elaborate on their relationship. Ozone high in the atmosphere absorbs ultraviolet radiation from the sun, thereby protecting living organisms below from this dangerous radiation. The term ‘ozone hole’ refers to recent depletion of this protective layer over Earth's Polar Regions. People, plants, and animals living under the ozone hole are harmed by the solar radiation now reaching the Earth's surface—where it causes health problems from eye damage to skin cancer.
In the 1980s, scientists discovered that the ozone layer was thinning in the lower stratosphere, with particularly dramatic ozone loss known as the ozone hole in the Antarctic springtime. This is caused by increasing concentrations of ozone-depleting chemicals in the stratosphere that come from spray cans and refrigerants. These long-lived chlorofluorocarbons or CFCs (chemical compounds with chlorine and/or fluorine attached to carbon) remain in the atmosphere for decades to over a century depending on the CFC. At the poles CFCs attach to ice particles. When the sun comes out again in the polar spring, the ice particles melt, releasing the ozone-depleting molecules from the ice particle surfaces. Once released, these ozone-destroying molecules do their dirty work, breaking apart the molecular bonds in UV radiation-absorbing ozone.

Stratospheric ozone also has natural processes that remove it from the atmosphere. Tiny sulfate particles blasted into the stratosphere by volcanic eruptions Pinatubo (1991) and El Chichon (1982) caused measurable