International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer

Oradea, September 16-th 2009

I organized in my school an activity and my students deepens the concepts learned in chemistry lessons: ozone, ozone layer, greenhouse effect, greenhouse gases. Students become aware of the importance of protecting the ozone layer in the stratosphere, and know what are the effects if the ozone layer thins.

September 16 marks the International Day for the Protection of the Ozone Layer, declared by the United Nations to commemorate the date when the Montreal Protocol was signed to ban use of ozone depleting chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).

Scientists are tracking the size and depth of the ozone hole with observations from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument on NASA's Aura spacecraft, the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment on the European Space Agency's ERS-2 spacecraft, and the Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet instrument on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's NOAA-16 satellite.

The depth and area of the ozone hole are governed by the amount of chlorine and bromine in the Antarctic stratosphere. Over the southern winter, polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) form in the extreme cold of the atmosphere, and chlorine gases react on the cloud particles to release chlorine into a form that can easily destroy ozone. When the sun rises in August after months of seasonal polar darkness, the sunlight heats the clouds and catalyzes the chemical reactions that deplete the ozone layer. The ozone hole begins to grow in August and reaches its largest area in late September to early October.

The measures taken by nations in time to stop ozone layer, by teacher Valentina Matei in her PowerPoint presentation "Ozone and ozone layer". Finally, students watched a movie with NASA's AURA spacecraft, launched by NASA in July 2004, and has important mission to monitor the ozone in the stratosphere.

They also received a badge from the Oradea City Hall in the "European Mobility Week" held between 16-22 September 2009.





Andra Filimon and Diana Cacuci' s painting: