It turns out that the ozone hole may not be completely healed.
The ozone layer, which protects Earth from the
Sun’s ultraviolet radiation, has been severely damaged by chlorofluorocarbons
and other harmful compounds, with a large hole forming each year over
Antarctica. Although the Montreal Protocol banned such compounds in 1989, it
will take many years for the ozone layer to fully recover, according to Anne
Douglass, Natalya Kramarova, and Susan Strahan of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight
Center. They presented their study at
the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting in San Francisco.
