Air conditioning eventually reach the upper atmosphere. Once the refrigerant reaches the stratosphere, UV radiation from the Sun homolytically cleaves the chlorine-carbon bond, yielding a chlorine radical. These chlorine radicals catalyze the breakdown of ozone into diatomic oxygen, depleting the ozone layer that shields the Earth's surface from strong UV radiation. Each chlorine radical remains active as a catalyst until it binds with another radical, forming a stable molecule and quenching the chain reaction. Prior to 1994, most automotive air conditioning systems used R-12 as a refrigerant. It was replaced with R-134a refrigerant, which has no ozone depletion potential. Old R-12 systems
Earth Radiation Budget Satellite was one of three satellites in the ERBE and it carried two instruments as part of that effort. The ERBE scanner was a set of three detectors that studied longwave radiation, shortwave radiation and total energy radiating from the Earth along a line of the satellite's path. The ERBE non-scanner was a set of five detectors that measured the total energy from the Sun, and the shortwave and total energy from the entire Earth disk and the area beneath the satellite. The other two ERBE missions were included on the NOAA-9 satellite when it was launched in January 1985, and