NASA Helps Identify Uptick in Emissions of Ozone-Depleting Compounds

Narration: Qing Liang

Transcript:

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The Montreal Protocol is a

landmark international treaty

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signed by all 198 countries

around the world in 1987.

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After we discovered that the

emissions of the very long lived

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gases such as

chlorofluorocarbons can go into

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the atmosphere and destroy the

ozone layer, these countries

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around the world come together

and sign this protocol to reduce

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the emission of this long live

gases.

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My name is Qing Liang, I am a

research scientist working in

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NASA Goddard Space Flight

Center.

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Due to the successful

cooperation between the

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scientific community and the

policy makers, the atmospheric

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concentration has been declining

since the 1990s. And then the

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stratospheric ozone layer is on

the road to recovery.

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CFC 11 is one of the most

important chlorofluorocarbons

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gases, the scientists around the

world has always been

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continuously monitoring the

atmospheric concentration of

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CFCs from the global observation

of stations. A few years ago,

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Dr. Steve Montzka from NOAA ha

noticed that the globa

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concentration of CFC levels ha

actually been declining slowe

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than expected. That's inspire

the community to think ther

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might be additional emission

that we're not aware of. Th

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scientists has also used th

atmospheric observations o

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these gases from a Korea

station and found out that abou

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half of the emission was comin

from increasing emissions i

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eastern China

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So what I do is really taking my

model get some background

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calculation and provide them to

the University of Bristol teams

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as well as the other modeling

teams. They use that as the

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underlying atmospheric

distribution of these gases. As

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the problem was detected, and

these papers were published, it

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seems that the Chinese

government has taken effective

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measures to stop the illegal

production and usage of these

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gases. This is absolutely

detective work. This is reason

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why we say although we're very

happy with the progress of the

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Montreal Protocol it's of crit

cal importance for NASA, NOAA, a

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ong with other internati

nal agencies to continue to

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ake atmospheric observation

of these gases. Without t

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ese measurements, it is not poss

ble for us to detect the problem

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and take action to solve

the problem