How summer thunderstorms could be punching new holes in the ozone layer - Christian Science Monitor

In fact, Anderson's team initially was working on another climate problem: the formation of cirrus clouds and their effect on climate. Clouds represent one of the big areas of uncertainty in climate models. And cirrus clouds can have a warming effect on climate by allowing sunlight through but trapping heat rising up from underneath. The tops of thunderheads are one source of cirrus clouds, which assume their feather-like appearance as high-altitude winds blow across the tops of the thunderheads, giving them their anvil shape.The study points to "the potential for a pretty significant effect on stratospheric ozone at latitudes where we normally wouldn't think that would happen," said Mario Molina, an atmospheric scientist at the University of California at San Diego who shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995 with the late Frank Rowland. The two worked out the chemistry behind stratospheric ozone depletion and chlorofluorocarbons, once widely used as refrigeran!
ts and aerosol-spray propellants.<br />http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2012/0726/How-summer-thunderstorms-could-be-punching-new-holes-in-the-ozone-layer