Ozone depletion nitrous oxide emissions over the natural background, which would in turn result in an increase in the amount of NO in the stratosphere. Thus human activity could affect the stratospheric ozone layer. In the following year, Crutzen and (independently) Harold Johnston suggested that NO emissions from supersonic passenger aircraft, which would fly in the lower stratosphere, could also deplete the ozone layer. However, more recent analysis in 1995 by David W. Fahey, an atmospheric scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, found that the drop in ozone would be from 1–2 percent if a fleet of 500 supersonic passenger
Ozone ozone. In the clear atmosphere, with only nitrogen and oxygen, ozone can react with the atomic oxygen to form two molecules of O An estimate of the rate of this termination step to the cycling of atomic oxygen back to ozone can be found simply by taking the ratios of the concentration of O to O. The termination reaction is catalysed by the presence of certain free radicals, of which the most important are hydroxyl (OH), nitric oxide (NO) and atomic chlorine (Cl) and bromine (Br). In the second half of the 20th Century the amount of ozone in the