Undoing the Sins of Mankind – The Large Arctic Ozone Depleted Layer Heals

If Time travel existed, we sure as hell are spiraling down that hole. The only positive side of the pandemic outbreak due to the COVID19 as some suggest is ‘The Healing of the Environment’. It is a fallacy, scientists have proven that all the changes taking place in the ozone layer, or the environment as a whole. 

Recent studies have shown that the record-breaking ozone hole was healed. The largest-ever Ozone hole to break in the artic has closed up and people are awestruck at what is nothing short of a miracle.

Scientists monitoring the “unprecedented” hole at the Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service (CAMS) have announced that the closure took place last week. Despite coronavirus lockdowns globally leading to a significant reduction in air pollution, researchers said the pandemic likely was not the reason for the ozone hole closing. They say the closure is due to an unusually long-lived polar vortex, and it isn’t related to air quality changes.

Human-made chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons and greenhouse gases have been destroying the layer for the past century, eventually causing the famous hole that formed in Antarctica in the 1980s. Experts pointed to “unusual atmospheric conditions” as the cause of the most recent hole, leading to industrial chemicals interacting with high-altitude clouds at extremely low temperatures. 

“This year’s low Arctic ozone happens about once per decade,”

Paul Newman, chief scientist for Earth Sciences at NASA‘s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland said in his press statement. He also added,

“For the overall health of the ozone layer, this is concerning since Arctic ozone levels are typically high during March and April.”

It is a bizarre development indeed as the increase in the presence of CFCs in the atmosphere could have posed an unimaginably large threat to the human population. Scientists from the European Space Agency have stated that the size of the hole above the Arctic is three times the size of Greenland. They expected the hole to close up with the increase in temperatures that would allow the ozone depleted air to mix with the ozone rich air in other latitudes. 

The Montreal Protocol has contributed largely to the decrease in ozone depletion layers over the Antarctic regions due to the combined efforts of 197 countries to reduce carbon emissions and prevent the release of CFCs in the atmosphere. Paul Newman also said that the scientists are unsure of what caused the wave dynamics to become weak this year but without the implementation of the Montreal Protocol, the Arctic depletion would’ve been much worse.