Ozone layer ‘will be fully healed by 2066’

EARTH’S protective ozone layer is healing at a pace that would fully close the final hole over Antarctica in about 43 years, a UN report disclosed yesterday.

Recovery is progressing more than 35 years after every nation in the world agreed to stop producing chemicals that destroy the layer of ozone in the Earth’s atmosphere that shields the planet from radiation linked to skin cancer, cataracts and crop damage.

“In the upper stratosphere and in the ozone hole we see things getting better,” said Paul Newman, co-chairman of the scientific assessment which takes place every four years.

The global average amount of ozone 18 miles high in the atmosphere will not be back to 1980 pre-thinning levels until about 2040, delegates at Denver’s American Meteorological Society convention were told.

It will not return to normal in the Arctic until 2045 and in Antarctica, where it is so thin there is an annual giant gaping hole in the layer, it will not be fully fixed until 2066, the report said.

Environmental advocates across the world have long hailed the efforts to heal the ozone hole – springing out of the 1987 Montreal Protocol that banned a class of chemicals often used in refrigerants and aerosols – as one of the biggest ecological victories for humanity.

“Ozone action sets a precedent for climate action. Our success in phasing out ozone-eating chemicals shows us what can and must be done – as a matter of urgency – to transition away from fossil fuels, reduce greenhouse gases and so limit temperature increase,” Prof Petteri Taalas, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization, said in a statement.

Signs of preliminary healing were reported four years ago but were slight.