THE ozone hole above Antarctica may not be damaging life in the ocean below
after all. If Californian researchers are right, then increased ultraviolet
radiation is having scarcely any effect on the growth of marine plankton, the
base of the ocean’s food chain.
The team, led by Kevin Arrigo of Stanford University in Palo Alto, has
created computer models of phytoplankton growth over a year in the southern
hemisphere before and after the ozone hole appeared in the 1980s. They included
such factors as the position of the ozone hole, cloud cover, and UV-B strength,
the type of ultraviolet radiation…
