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From World News, Global Roundup

Today • Thursday • June 26, 2008

A probe into levels of an important greenhouse gas above the tropical Atlantic has challenged assumptions about key sources of global warming, scientists said yesterday.

Researchers found that natural chemicals in the atmosphere west of equatorial Africa destroyed 50 per cent more ozone in that region than expected.

Scientists led by John Plane at the University of Leeds in northern England analysed a year of ozone and methane measurements taken at the Cape Verde Atmospheric Observatory on Sao Vicente, an island some 500 kilometres west of Senegal.

This unexpected discovery implies that the mathematical model for calculating the various sources of global warming could be flawed, although global warming itself is not being contested, the scientists said.

Further work is needed to see whether the phenomenon observed in the tropical Atlantic applies elsewhere. — AFP