Earth’s protective ozone layer is recovering slowly but measurably and will have fully healed in about 43 years by 2066, a new United Nations report says.
The recovery is underway more than 35 years after every nation in the world agreed to stop producing chemicals that chomp on the layer of ozone in the atmosphere, a quadrennial scientific assessment found.
“In the upper stratosphere and in the ozone hole we see things getting better,” said Paul Newman, co-chair of the scientific assessment.
The global average amount of ozone 30km high in the atmosphere won’t be back to 1980 pre-thinning levels until about 2040, the report said, adding it won’t be back to normal in the Arctic until 2045.
Decades ago, people could go into a shop and buy a can of refrigerants that eat away at the ozone, punch a hole in it and pollute the atmosphere, said scientific panel co-chair David Fahey and director of the US National Oceanic.
David added that now not only are the substances are banned but they are no longer much in people’s homes or cars, replaced by cleaner chemicals.
The report also warned that efforts to artificially cool the planet by putting aerosols into the atmosphere to reflect the sunlight would thin the ozone layer by as much as 20 per cent in Antarctica.
