A massive blaze engulfed Shuri Castle in the early hours of Thursday (Oct 31) on Japan’s Okinawa island, almost completely destroying the UNESCO World Heritage site. (Video: APTN)

Shuri Castle is nearly 600 years old: https://cna.asia/2q6eLYZ The castle had been scheduled to be included as a stop on the 2020 Tokyo Olympic torch relay route: https://cna.asia/2WrDKlD Subscribe to our channel here: https://cna.asia/youtubesub

Subscribe to our news service on Telegram: https://cna.asia/telegram Follow us: CNA: https://cna.asia

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Inherent Resolve.

Sgt. Nathaneil G. Irish, 23, of Billings, Montana, died Oct. 27, 2019, of a non-combat related incident at Camp Taji, Iraq. The incident is under investigation.

Irish was assigned to 25th Brigade Support Battalion, 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, Fort Wainwright, Alaska.

For more information regarding Sgt. Nathaneil G. Irish, media may contact Mr. John Pennell, U.S. Army Alaska Public Affairs Office, at 907-384-2072 or [email protected]l.

NASA-The annual ozone hole reached its peak extent of 6.3 million square miles (16. 4 million square kilometers) on Sept. 8, and then shrank to less than 3.9 million square miles (10 million square kilometers) for the remainder of September and October, according to NASA and NOAA satellite measurements. During years with normal weather conditions, the ozone hole typically grows to a maximum area of about 8 million square miles in late September or early October.

“It’s great news for ozone in the Southern Hemisphere,” said Paul Newman, chief scientist for Earth Sciences at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “But it’s important to recognize that what we’re seeing this year is due to warmer stratospheric temperatures. It’s not a sign that atmospheric ozone is suddenly on a fast track to recovery.”

Ozone is a highly reactive molecule comprised of three oxygen atoms that occurs naturally in small amounts. Roughly seven to 25 miles above Earth’s surface, in a layer of the atmosphere called the stratosphere, the ozone layer is a sunscreen, shielding the planet from potentially harmful ultraviolet radiation that can cause skin cancer and cataracts, suppress immune systems and also damage plants.

The Antarctic ozone hole forms during the Southern Hemisphere’s late winter as the returning Sun’s rays start ozone-depleting reactions. These reactions involve chemically active forms of chlorine and bromine derived from man-made compounds. The chemistry that leads to their formation involves chemical reactions that occur on the surfaces of cloud particles that form in cold stratospheric layers, leading ultimately to runaway reactions that destroy ozone molecules. In warmer temperatures fewer polar stratospheric clouds form and they don’t persist as long, limiting the ozone-depletion process.

NASA and NOAA monitor the ozone hole via complementary instrumental methods.

Satellites, including NASA’s Aura satellite, the NASA-NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite and NOAA’s Joint Polar Satellite System NOAA-20 satellite, measure ozone from space. The Aura satellite’s Microwave Limb Sounder also estimates levels of ozone-destroying chlorine in the stratosphere.

At the South Pole, NOAA staff launch weather balloons carrying ozone-measuring “sondes” which directly sample ozone levels vertically through the atmosphere. Most years, at least some levels of the stratosphere, the region of the upper atmosphere where the largest amounts of ozone are normally found, are found to be completely devoid of ozone.

“This year, ozonesonde measurements at the South Pole did not show any portions of the atmosphere where ozone was completely depleted,” said atmospheric scientist Bryan Johnson at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado.

Uncommon but not unprecedented

This is the third time in the last 40 years that weather systems have caused warm temperatures that limit ozone depletion, said Susan Strahan, an atmospheric scientist with Universities Space Research Association, who works at NASA Goddard. Similar weather patterns in the Antarctic stratosphere in September 1988 and 2002 also produced atypically small ozone holes, she said.

“It’s a rare event that we’re still trying to understand,” said Strahan. “If the warming hadn’t happened, we’d likely be looking at a much more typical ozone hole.”

There is no identified connection between the occurrence of these unique patterns and changes in climate.

The weather systems that disrupted the 2019 ozone hole are typically modest in September, but this year they were unusually strong, dramatically warming the Antarctic’s stratosphere during the pivotal time for ozone destruction. At an altitude of about 12 miles (20 kilometers), temperatures during September were 29 degrees F (16˚C) warmer than average, the warmest in the 40-year historical record for September by a wide margin. In addition, these weather systems also weakened the Antarctic polar vortex, knocking it off its normal center over the South Pole and reducing the strong September jet stream around Antarctica from a mean speed of 161 miles per hour to a speed of 67 miles per hour. This slowing vortex rotation allowed air to sink in the lower stratosphere where ozone depletion occurs, where it had two impacts.

First, the sinking warmed the Antarctic lower stratosphere, minimizing the formation and persistence of the polar stratospheric clouds that are a main ingredient in the ozone-destroying process. Second, the strong weather systems brought ozone-rich air from higher latitudes elsewhere in the Southern Hemisphere to the area above the Antarctic ozone hole. These two effects led to much higher than normal ozone levels over Antarctica compared to ozone hole conditions usually present since the mid 1980s.

As of October 16, the ozone hole above Antarctica remained small but stable and is expected to gradually dissipate in the coming weeks.

This time-lapse photo from Sept. 9, 2019, shows the flight path of an ozonesonde as it rises into the atmosphere over the South Pole from the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Scientists release these balloon-borne sensors to measure the thickness of the protective ozone layer high up in the atmosphere.

Credits: Robert Schwarz/University of Minnesota

Antarctic ozone slowly decreased in the 1970s, with large seasonal ozone deficits appearing in the early 1980s. Researchers at the British Antarctic Survey discovered the ozone hole in 1985, and NASA’s satellite estimates of total column ozone from the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer confirmed the 1985 event, revealing the ozone hole’s continental scale.

Thirty-two years ago, the international community signed the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer. This agreement regulated the consumption and production of ozone-depleting compounds. Atmospheric levels of man-made ozone depleting substances increased up to the year 2000. Since then, they have slowly declined but remain high enough to produce significant ozone loss. The ozone hole over Antarctica is expected to gradually become less severe as chlorofluorocarbons— banned chlorine-containing synthetic compounds that were once frequently used as coolants—continue to decline. Scientists expect the Antarctic ozone to recover back to the 1980 level around 2070.

California’s devastating Kincade Fire located in Sonoma County has grown to over 66,000 acres and NASA’s Terra satellite captured this dramatic image of the smoke plume cascading down the coast. The fire is located northeast of Geyserville and is classified as a “vegetation fire” and its origins are still under investigation.  CAL Fire released an update on this destructive fire today, October 28 at 7 a.m. PDT.  The major impediment in fighting this fire seems to be the weather.  CAL Fire reports that: “A Red Flag warning will continue through Monday morning with 40-50 mph wind gusts still a possibility throughout the evening while narrow roads and steep terrain are making access to the fire areas very difficult. These Northeast winds coupled with low humidity create critical fire weather conditions. Firefighters will continue to mitigate structure threats and find opportunities construct control lines.” So weather coupled with the steep, narrow terrain makes controlling and containing the fire especially challenging.  Well over 100,000 residents in the area have been evacuated and according to CAL fire 79,675 structures are threatened and 96 structures have already been destroyed. Over 70,000 of the structures threatened are homes.

NASA’s satellite instruments are often the first to detect wildfires burning in remote regions, and the locations of new fires are sent directly to land managers worldwide within hours of the satellite overpass. Together, NASA instruments detect actively burning fires, track the transport of smoke from fires, provide information for fire management, and map the extent of changes to ecosystems, based on the extent and severity of burn scars. NASA has a fleet of Earth-observing instruments, many of which contribute to our understanding of fire in the Earth system. Satellites in orbit around the poles provide observations of the entire planet several times per day, whereas satellites in a geostationary orbit provide coarse-resolution imagery of fires, smoke and clouds every five to 15 minutes. For more information: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/fires/main/missions/index.html

NASA’s Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) Worldview application provides the capability to interactively browse over 700 global, full-resolution satellite imagery layers and then download the underlying data. Many of the available imagery layers are updated within three hours of observation, essentially showing the entire Earth as it looks “right now.” This satellite image was collected on Oct. 27, 2019 by the Terra satellite using the MODIS (Moderation Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer). Actively burning fires, detected by thermal bands, are shown as red points. Image Courtesy: NASA Worldview, Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS). Caption: Lynn Jenner with information from CAL fire.