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Greenhouse gas makes its presence felt
A new type of greenhouse gas making its way through the atmosphere and spreading around the world could contribute to global warming, warn Swiss scientists.
Thanks to new technology, they have been able to track the spread of the compounds as far away as Australia.
The Jungfraujoch in the Bernese Alps. At about 3,500 metres above sea level you would expect the air to be fresh and clean.
But a measurement station perched on the ridge shows that the air at this rarefied altitude is in fact far from clean. The most recent example of pollution is the discovery of the first traces of two so-called foaming agents that belong to the family of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs).
These compounds are the successors of chemicals that infamously attack the ozone layer and were banned under the 1987 Montreal Protocol – CFCs or chlorofluorocarbons. Chlorine-based CFCs were used in refrigerants, propellants, and cleaning solvents, but also to manufacture plastics and insulation materials.