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According to a new report, a 31-year global agreement to reduce levels of chemicals that deplete the ozone layer could finally bear fruit.
Last week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that a hole that forms in ozone over Antarctica each September was not as big as it would have been 20 years ago.
According to NOAA, ozone is a layer above the surface of the Earth that "acts like a sunscreen" to protect the plant from ultraviolet rays that can cause skin cancer and cataracts. Damage the plants and suppress the immune system.
The hole was still "slightly above average" this year, the report said. But that could have been worse as colder than average temperatures created ideal conditions for destroying ozone in the Antarctic stratosphere, NOAA reported.
Scientists from NOAA and NASA attribute the Montreal Protocol to preventing the growth of the hole. The agreement was signed by all countries of the world in 1987 to reduce and phase out the production and consumption of ozone-depleting chemicals.
"Chlorine levels in the Antarctic stratosphere have decreased by about 11% from the peak of 2000," said Paul A. Newman, Chief Scientist for Earth Sciences at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, in a statement. "The colder temperatures this year would have left us with a much bigger hole in the ozone layer if the chlorine had still reached the levels we had seen in the year 2000.
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