'Significant milestone': Hole in the ozone layer will close in the next 50 years

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the United States has predicted that the hole in the ozone layer will close in the next 50 years.

Calling it a “significant milestone” on the path to recovery, NOAA scientists found that in comparison to the 1980s, concentrations of harmful chemicals had declined by just over 50 per cent in the mid-level of the stratosphere.

The Antarctic ozone layer, which protects all life on Earth from the sun’s harmful radiation, could eventually recover “sometime around 2070,” according to NOAA.

Due to complex meteorological and chemical processes, every year a giant hole begins forming during spring in the Southern Hemisphere.

The hole, which is being tracked by the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), usually begins forming during spring in the Southern Hemisphere.

Using three-dimensional modelling, CAMS scientists have been closely monitoring the hole’s development since the end of August.

According to Director of the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service Vincent-Henri Peuch, “The 2022 Antarctic ozone hole started to develop in late August and has so far followed similar trends from the last decade in terms of area, minimum total column, mass deficit and minimum temperature.”

“According to our data from the start of September, the size of the ozone hole is within the average range. However, we will be watching very closely in the next few weeks as the 2020 and 2021 ozone holes only started to become exceptional later on.”

The Montreal Protocol was signed in 1987 to try and curb the number of harmful chemicals in the atmosphere just seven years after scientists discovered man-made chemicals were damaging the ozone layer.

In one of the first ever universally ratified treaties in United Nations history, these chemicals started to be phased out to protect the ozone layer.

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