When intense enough, flares can disturb the Earth's atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel.
But fewer ozone-eaters in the lower atmosphere mean that the ozone layer should eventually heal itself, perhaps by 2050 or so.
Finally, in a third set of simulations, they doubled the CO2 in the atmosphere, but added a layer of sulfate aerosols to the stratosphere, which would deflect about two per cent of incoming sunlight from the earth.
While the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere plays an important role in limiting harmful ultraviolet light reaching the Earth's surface, low-level ozone is a pollutant that is harmful, causing respiratory problems in animals as well as well-documented cases in humans.
And that gas released into the atmosphere means faster erosion of the ozone layer, possibly speeding up the process and making matters even worse.
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Packages covered with a sealed layer of clear plastic are modified-atmosphere packages, which have a gas-filled space inside to help preserve freshness and color.
One of these satellites, CloudSat, has given the first glimpses of the middle layer of clouds in the Earth's atmosphere.
Since April 2006, CloudSat's radar has, however, been providing a globe-circling slice of the middle layer, a previously unobserved part of the atmosphere.
During the dinosaurs' time on Earth, "the atmosphere became charged with methane, which finally damaged the ozone layer and brought about great changes in the vegetation, " it added.
Metop's suite of instruments retrieve a range of data - from the temperature and water content of the different layers in the atmosphere to the speed of the winds whipping across the ocean, and from the health of the ozone layer to the spread of volcanic ash plumes across the sky.
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