Ozone depletion and climate change are environmental challenges whose connections have been explored and which have been compared and contrasted, for example in terms of global regulation, in various studies and books.
There is widespread scientific interest in better regulation of climate change, ozone depletion and air pollution, as in general the human relationship with the biosphere is deemed of major historiographical and political significance.[1] Already by 1994 the legal debates about respective regulation regimes on climate change, ozone depletion and air pollution were being dubbed "monumental" and a combined synopsis provided.[2]
There are some parallels between atmospheric chemistry and anthropogenic emissions in the discussions which have taken place and the regulatory attempts which have been made. Most important is that the gases causing both problems have long lifetimes after emission to the atmosphere, thus causing problems that are difficult to reverse. However, the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer and the Montreal Protocol that amended it are seen as success stories, while the Kyoto Protocol on anthropogenic climate change has largely failed. Currently, efforts are being undertaken to assess the reasons and to use synergies, for example with regard to data reporting and policy design and further exchanging of information.[3]
Ozone depletion is not a primary cause of climate change, however there exists a physical science connection between the two phenomena. The Earth's atmospheric ozone has two major effects on the Earth's temperature balance. Firstly, it absorbs solar ultraviolet radiation, leading to the heating of the stratosphere. Secondly, it also traps heat in the troposphere by absorbing infrared radiation emitted by the Earth's surface. Ozone depletion in the stratopshere has had a negative radiative forcing impact, however anthropogenic increases in the tropospheric abundance more than offsets this.[4] Additionally, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other halocarbons which have caused ozone depletion are strong greenhouse gases, and the warming influence of the addition of these to the atmosphere as been greater than the net effect of the antropogenic changes in the amount of ozone.[4]