If you think the world has been filled with nothing but bad news recently, you’re only partially correct. Maybe even mostly correct. Maybe even almost entirely correct, like 99.9 percent. But that still means you are .1 percent incorrect, and within that .1 percent exists a little fraction of good news, like the fact that the hole in the ozone layer has gotten a little bit smaller despite all of our best efforts to tear that shit wide open, according to NASA.
We’ve known there was a hole in the ozone layer for quite a while. We also know that it opens and closes annually over the earth’s southern pole. In 2024, that hole opened a little less than it usually does. That, according to scientists from NASA and the NOAA, is a good thing. It means the whole is healing. The hole reached a peak of 22,400,000 km² on September 28. That’s the seventh smallest it’s been since 1992, back when we first started noticing the ozone layer repairing itself after we finally started taking steps to minimize it.
You see, kids, back then we used to have politicians who actually cared about dire environmental warnings and would band together to do something about it. In 1987, several of the world’s industrialized nations signed the Montréal Protocol, an international agreement to phase out ozone-depleting chemicals like chlorofluorocarbons.
These chemicals, which were common in things like hairspray, are ripping a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica, letting in tons of UV radiation that was increasing risks of skin cancer, cataracts, and of course harm to the overall planetary ecosystem. Just a few short years later, we started to notice that the hole in the ozone layer was getting smaller. We identified a problem, didn’t let greed get in the way, and then fixed the problem. Mostly.
The shrinkage can be attributed to the continued decline of chlorofluorocarbon chemicals and a little nudge from an extra bit of ozone carried by currents from the northern part of the Antarctic. Don’t get things twisted though: there’s still a way to go for there is no hole anymore. At this rate, it looks like it’ll be fully restored by 2066.
The post The Hole in the Ozone Layer Continues to Shrink, Despite Earth’s Shenanigans appeared first on VICE.
The post The Hole in the Ozone Layer Continues to Shrink, Despite Earth’s Shenanigans appeared first on VICE.
