OK I did some more digging on Lu and his ozone paper that made so many waves.

I found this at real climate on some of his earlier work.

realclimate.org

The story hit the ‘tubes earlier this year when researcher Q.B. Lu predicted that this years Antarctic ozone hole would be the biggest ever due to the actions of increased galactic cosmic rays (GCR) (because we are at solar minimum and GCR are inversely correlated to solar activity). This years peak ozone hole has now come and gone, and the prediction can therefore be evaluated. Unfortunately for Dr. Lu, this year’s hole was merely about average for the decade – a result that wasn’t too supportive for his theory.

This story made me a little curious about this though. Firstly, I didn’t initially understand why cosmic rays should be playing a role in ozone depletion – most of the cosmic ray effects that are usually discussed revolve around cloud-aerosol connections, but there are not many clouds in the stratosphere where the ozone holes form, and the ones there are (Polar Stratospheric Clouds – PSCs) are much more sensitive to temperature and water vapour than they are likely to be to background aerosols. On further investigation, it turns out that this idea has been out there for a few years (and was reported on then) and has subsequently been discussed in the ozone literature.