Ozone Layer Study Predicts 2050 Recovery

The ozone layer is no longer disappearing thanks to the efforts of the world, a major new study – a Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion 2010 - has put forward.

Compiled by 300 international scientists, the study was released on the United Nation’s International Day for Preservation of the Ozone Layer, and it adds that the layer – which reduces the strength of UV rays hitting the earth’s surface - could potentially be fully restored over the next four decades, culminating in a 2050 recovery.

The International Day for Preservation of the Ozone Layer is marked every 16 September - it was on that day in 1987 that the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer was ratified.

Ozone Layer Study

The Montreal agreement was focused on the withdrawal of ozone-damaging substances including CFCs (Chlorofluorocarbons) and the Ozone layer study noted that this process had been effective, stating that the treaty “...has protected the stratospheric ozone layer from much higher levels of depletion by phasing out production and consumption of ozone depleting substances.”

The study highlights how a significant number of ozone-depleting substances are also regarded as greenhouse gases and, linking this, stressed that the halt in the ozone layer’s deterioration was taking place alongside a reduction in the concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gas levels.

Ozone Layer Recovery

Overall, ozone levels are stabilising and – as a result of the Montreal Protocol – by around 2050, non-polar region ozone layer areas are on course to return to the levels they were at over thirty years ago. Ozone layer recovery in polar areas will be slower, it adds.

Compared to the Kyoto Protocol – which expires in 2012 – the Montreal Protocol’s effects have been five times more successful. In other words, efforts to limit ozone-depleting substances have been demonstrably more powerful on the environment than efforts to limit emissions.

“Without the Montreal Protocol and its associated Vienna Convention, atmospheric levels of ozone-depleting substances could have increased tenfold by 2050”, under-secretary general at the UN, Achim Steiner, explained, putting the significance of the report into context.

“This in turn could have led to up to 20 million more cases of skin cancer and 130 million more cases of eye cataracts, not to speak of damage to human immune systems, wildlife and agriculture.”

See also:

Is the Ozone Hole Stopping Global Warming?