According to a recent investigation by an international team of scientists, humanity’s swift and enormous output of greenhouse gas emissions is shrinking the stratosphere. Notably, the increase of CO2 emissions is warming and expanding the lower part of the atmosphere, leading to its encroachment into the stratosphere.
This discovery is among the latest evidence of the profound impact humans are having on the planet. Another finding is that the climate crisis had shifted the Earth’s axis as the massive ice melting redistributes weight worldwide.
The team behind the stratosphere research reported that climate-altering emissions had shrunken the zone by 400 meters since the 1980s. They also found that it could thin by about another kilometer by 2080 without significant cuts in emissions.
A shrinking stratosphere could affect GPS systems, satellite operations, and radio communications. The researchers said:
It may affect satellite trajectories, orbital lifetimes, and retrievals […] the propagation of radio waves, and eventually the overall performance of the Global Positioning System and other space-based navigational systems.
The atmosphere consists of several layers. The troposphere is first, extending from the Earth’s surface to its upper boundary, the tropopause. The stratosphere comes next, extending from the tropopause at about 10 to 17 km (about 6 to 11 miles) to its upper boundary (the stratopause) at about 50 km (30 miles) above the Earth’s surface. It contains the ozone layer.
The troposphere is where humans reside, and its heating and expanding because of climate change, pressing into the lower boundary of the stratosphere. Plus, when CO2 enters the stratosphere, it cools the fresh atmosphere, causing it to contract further.
This study is a blunt reminder of the climate emergency and the planetary-scale impact of humans. Juan Añel, of the Spanish University of Vigo, Ourense, who is a part of the research team, said:
It is shocking. This proves we are messing with the atmosphere up to 60 kilometers.
Researchers were already aware that the troposphere was growing as carbon emissions increased. They had hypothesized that the stratosphere was shrinking, but this research is the first to prove it through satellite data.
Before this, scientists thought it could be shrinking due to ozone losses – but alas, this was never the case. The new study used satellite observations and detailed weather models to conclude that the main reason for the stratosphere’s contraction is global warming caused by carbon emissions.
Paul Williams, a professor of atmospheric science at the UK’s University of Reading, who didn’t participate in the new study, said:
This study finds the first observational evidence of stratosphere contraction and shows that the cause is, in fact, our greenhouse gas emissions rather than ozone. Some scientists have started calling the upper atmosphere the ‘ignorosphere’ because it is so poorly studied. This new paper will strengthen the case for better observations of this distant but critically important part of the atmosphere.
Williams conducted his own research that shows the climate crisis could triple the severe turbulence experienced by air travelers. He continued:
It is remarkable that we are still discovering new aspects of climate change after decades of research. It makes me wonder what other changes our emissions are inflicting on the atmosphere that we haven’t discovered yet.
The dominance of humanity’s activities on Earth has led scientists to recommend establishing a new geological epoch called the Anthropocene. The suggested markers for this new epoch include greenhouse gas emissions, domestic chicken bones, and radioactive elements scattered in the 1950s by nuclear weapons tests.
Scientists have also suggested declaring this era the “plastic age” (to follow the bronze and iron ages). Widespread plastic pollution would be the plastic age’s marker.
