Bright spot: Antarctica’s ozone hole is starting to heal

The hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic has begun to shrink, signaling good news for the environment several decades after an international accord to phase out certain pollutants, researchers said this week. In a triumph of international cooperation over a man-made environmental problem, research from the United States and the United Kingdom shows that the September-October ozone hole is getting smaller and forming later in the year. The study also shows other indications that the ozone layer is improving after it was being eaten away by chemicals in aerosols and refrigerants. Ozone is a combination of three oxygen atoms; high in the atmosphere, it shields Earth from ultraviolet rays.

It’s a big surprise…It isn’t just that the patient is in remission, he’s actually starting to get better.

Lead author Susan Solomon, an atmospheric chemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Ozone thinned elsewhere on Earth and already has begun healing in the middle section of the planet, but the Antarctic ozone hole was the gaping wound that grabbed the world’s attention. The Montreal Protocol , a 1987 global treaty to phase out many of the ozone-depleting chemicals, led companies to develop new products that didn’t eat away at the ozone layer. Still, scientists said it would take time before the problem would heal. Now it is actually getting better, not just stabilizing, based on new observations using different methods to measure the ozone layer.

There is a sense of ‘mission accomplished.’

University of California San Diego’s Mario Molina, who shared the 1995 Nobel Prize for chemistry for his characterization of the ozone problem

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