esoteric

Well now. This is something I actually know something about.

If you're not so inclined, that link leads to a post on RealClimate.org which comments on a recent scientific paper in the journal Nature that looks at boundary layer ozone loss due to halogens and how chemistry-transport models could be overpredicting ozone (a greenhouse gas) in these sorts of regions if they don't include these reactions in their simulations. This sort of issue is something that we looked extensively at during our recent foray into the Arctic. Satellite measurements have suggested that in the Arctic, regions impacted by halogen-driven ozone loss could be significant. It wasn't quite so clear based on the in-situ data, but whatever, we'll see. If you're really interested in this sort of subject, keep an eye on papers from ARCTAS. I tend to think that in the Arctic, this is a localized (regional) phenomenon. This current paper is looking at different regions of the globe - and it's interesting that they find an impact there. In any case - the point here is that this is an interesting subject for me in my daily research but I never would have guessed that it would have made "news." It is ultimately of unknown/insignificant consequence speaking in the broad climatological, increasing temperature context, I suspect. Yet, if you click on the link and read, you'll see what the media is reporting and the spin being put on so-called "deficiencies" of climate models as a result of this, which is most certainly not what the authors intended to be pulled from their paper, I suspect.
Eh.

Atmospheric and Climate scientists are ill-prepared for the magnifying-glass nit-picking of our normal day-to-day business that global warming has thrust upon us.