Image credit : NASA
Let ’s start with the bad intelligence : think back that hole in the ozone layer that scientists break over the Antarctic in 1985 ? The one we worry would give us all hide cancer and cataract with its unshielded flare-up of ultraviolet radiation rays ? It ’s still there .
It catch worse . scientist announced that a novel hole opened up in early 2011 — this one over the Arctic . So it ’s still a rough time for the stratosphere , the layer of the atm that help block out some of the sun ’s ultraviolet radiation rays .
But here ’s the honorable news show : we ’ve got a grip on the job .
When the first golf hole came to light , humankind leaders moved quickly . Through the Montreal Protocol of 1987 , several nations forbid the production of ozone - killing chlorofluorocarbon . Saving the ozone was literally the first thing the whole domain ever agreed on : A pact cast out CFCs was the first agreement ever to be ratify by every country in the United Nations .
As the story of atmospherical CFCs begin to drop , the ozone layer started repairing itself . While the going is dense — a destiny of the CFCs we released in the 1970s and 80s are still float around doing damage — scientists hope the ozone stratum will be back to normal by the end of this century .
Oddly enough , the run through ozone stratum did have one positive side impression : It helped curb global warming . The thinned ozone of the Antarctic led to brighter cloud that reflect some of the sun ’s radiotherapy away from Earth . Cutting out this effect may give global thaw a slender boost , but scientist are speedy to remark that we ’re far advantageously off with a level-headed ozone layer .
This clause in the first place appeared in the Jan - Feb 2012 take of mental_floss mag .
