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Global Climate Change Digest
A Guide to Information on Greenhouse Gases and Ozone Depletion
Published July 1988 through June 1999

FROM VOLUME 2, NUMBER 5, MAY 1989

NEWS...
ULTRAVIOLET INCREASE MEASURED IN ANTARCTIC

Item #d89may4

Late last year American researchers for the first time measured increased levels of ultraviolet radiation corresponding to the decreased levels of stratospheric ozone observed in the Antarctic spring. Although ultraviolet measurements were not made during the most intense ozone hole observed so far in the Antarctic spring of 1987, based on the 1988 data ultraviolet levels were five times as high as normal then, and twice as high as the normal summer maximum. Research by Scripps Institution of Oceanography's Osmund Holm-Hansen leads him to conclude that increased ultraviolet does not pose a significant threat to the phytoplankton in Antarctic ocean waters, an important part of the food chain. Other researchers are less confident of this conclusion. See Science, pp. 288-289, Apr. 21, 1989; New Scientist, p. 18, Apr. 15.