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two days ago we left new zealand uh

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christchurch and flew across the date

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line heading for

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this chile where we are

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at the moment

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it's winter time in the southern

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hemisphere so our

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and it does feel like we're exploring

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through atmosphere that hasn't been

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sampled

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ever in some cases or for many many

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years in others during our flight we

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went from 500 feet over the ocean all

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the way up to about 40 000 feet and in

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that we could see sea ice as down at the

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bottom

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all the way up to the polar vortex at

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the very top and temperatures that went

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to

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minus 70 degrees celsius outside the

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aircraft was extremely cold

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that meant that we were sampling in the

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stratosphere so we saw a lot of high

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ozone levels but not as high as they

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possibly could have been and we were

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very close to the ozone hall which will

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start to probably peak in about

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september

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the ozone hall is formed when you get a

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lot of cfcs so chloroflora carbons these

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were species that were banned nearly 30

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years ago as part of the montreal

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protocol and yet they're still in the

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atmosphere because they have a very long

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lifetime so it's going to be about 50

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years before the cfcs disappear from the

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i'm here on green mountain on ascension

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island which is right in the middle of

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the atlantic ocean

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green island is formed by tectonic

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processes the atlantic ocean is

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spreading and there's a ridge down the

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middle which represents the spreading

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center is where a lot of magma is coming

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up to the surface and then flowing out

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under the ocean becoming the new ocean

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floor it's about 3000 kilometers from

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the nearest land

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however when we came uh into the

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vicinity of the island let's say

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um

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200 miles to the south

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we began to encounter a lot of smoke and

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pollution the atom project is designed

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to understand how pollutants enter the

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remote parts of the global atmosphere

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i have to say we were totally unprepared

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for how thick the smoke was and how high

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the pollution concentrations were this

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smoke and pollution originates in

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southern africa

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where

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people set fires for a variety of

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reasons for agriculture for

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range improvement we did have a computer

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model that we used when we were planning

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the mission and the model predicted that

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this stuff would be here so maybe i

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shouldn't have been surprised although i

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have to say that um the model put the

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pollution in the right place

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but maybe not the right amount maybe we