Maps of ozone concentrations over the Arctic come from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA’s Aura satellite. The left image shows March 19, 2010, and the right shows the same date in 2011. March 2010 had relatively high ozone, while March 2011 has low levels.
On September 16, 1987, the first 24 nations signed on to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer; 173 more have signed on in the years since. The international agreement likely saved the world from an environmental crisis, while setting an example for how to develop and implement environmental policy. Caption and photo source: Goddard Center, NASA
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Good news for the ozone layer above the Arctic.The Montreal Protocol is showing effects: according to recent measurements, the ozone layer over the North Pole should recover by the end of the century.
This is one of the main findings of the EU project RECONCILE, which was completed in February 2013. Scientists from Jülich and their colleagues from 35 research institutions and universities in 14 countries spent four years investigating the chemical process of ozone depletion. Their findings verified once again that chlorine compounds are indeed responsible for this. The scientists used the new insights to improve existing climate models. These models facilitate more reliable predictions on how the ozone layer will develop in future and on the possible consequences of climate change for the stratosphere…
Read Full Article, Science Daily
WATCH: A Look Back At The Montreal Protocol, NASA
The Montreal Protocol is an international treaty designed to protect the ozone layer. This video takes a look back at how scientists, industry leaders, and policy makers came together to regulate chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center…
NASA Pinpoints Causes of 2011 Arctic Ozone Hole, NASA
The World We Avoided by Protecting the Ozone Layer, NASA
The year is 2065. Nearly two-thirds of Earth’s ozone is gone—not just over the poles, but everywhere. The infamous ozone hole over Antarctica, first discovered in the 1980s, is a year-round fixture, with a twin over the North Pole. The ultraviolet (UV) radiation falling on mid-latitude cities like Washington, D.C., is strong enough to cause sunburn in just five minutes. DNA-mutating UV radiation is up more than 500 percent, with likely harmful effects on plants, animals, and human skin cancer rates.
Such is the world we would have inherited if 193 nations had not agreed to ban ozone-depleting chemicals, according to atmospheric chemists from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the Johns Hopkins University, and the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. Led by Goddard scientist Paul Newman, the team used a state-of-the-art model to learn “what might have been” if chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and similar chemicals had not been banned through the 1989 Montreal Protocol, the first-ever international agreement on regulation of chemical pollutants…
