The ozone layer is on track to recover in the coming decades. That’s what a UN-appointed panel of experts said at the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society in Denver. The decision to phase out many substances harmful to the ozone layer also benefits climate protection.
If current trends continue, the ozone layer will return to 1980 levels – before the hole formed – by 2066 in Antarctica, 2045 in the Arctic and 2040 in the rest of the world.
In 1987, the United Nations agreed in the Montreal Protocol to end CFCs because they are depleting the ozone layer. This layer in the Earth’s atmosphere protects the Earth from the sun’s ultraviolet rays.
Experts write that the fact that the UN also decided in 2016 to stop using certain chemical refrigerants, fluorocarbons (HFCs), could reduce global warming by 0.3 to 0.5 degrees by 2100. Trifluoromethane is not included in the calculation. For example, HFCs are used in refrigerators and sometimes also in heat pumps or air conditioning systems. For some time, gases were considered an alternative to CFCs.
Although HFCs do not affect the ozone layer, they are more harmful to the climate than, for example, carbon dioxide.2. In line with the Montreal Protocol, this was followed by an agreement in 2016 to phase out the use of HFCs.
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