Healing continues in the atmosphere over the Antarctic: a hole that opens annually in the ozone layer over Earth’s southern pole was relatively small in 2024
compared to other years. Scientists with NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration project the ozone layer could fully recover by 2066.
At almost 8 million square miles , the monthly average ozone-depleted region in the Antarctic this year was nearly three times the size of the contiguous U.S. The hole reached its greatest one-day extent for the year on Sept. 28 at 8.5 million square miles . “The 2024 Antarctic hole is smaller than ozone holes seen in the early 2000s,” said Paul Newman, leader of NASA’s ozone research team and chief scientist for Earth sciences at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The gradual improvement we’ve seen in the past two decades shows that international efforts that curbed ozone-destroying chemicals are working.”
The Montreal Protocol was signed in 1987 to phase out CFC-based products and processes. Countries worldwide agreed to replace the chemicals with more environmentally friendly alternatives by 2010. The release of CFC compounds has dramatically decreased following the Montreal Protocol. But CFCs already in the air will take many decades to break down. As existing, ozone in the upper atmosphere will rebound globally, and ozone holes will shrink.
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