Working to alleviate climate change can often seem like a lost cause. Just this week, fears about a change in the jet stream set off more apocalyptic headlines suggesting it's too late for us to reverse the damage to our environment (other scientists strongly disagreed).

But now we have proof that not all is lost: a study published in Science yesterday shows that the hole in the ozone layer, Earth's protective chemical shield which absorbs most of the sun's UV rays, is actually starting to heal. The scientists showed that the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica, discovered in 1985, is around 4 million square miles smaller in 2014 than it was in 2000. That's the size of the entire Indian subcontinent.

Scientists believe that the recovery can be attributed to the decline of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which were long found in consumer products like hairspray and refrigerators. CFCs were found to contribute to the thinning of the ozone layer and the massive hole above Antarctica. The chemicals were banned internationally by the Montreal Protocol in 1987. Now, scientists think we're seeing the results of that ban.

"Even though we phased out the production of CFCs in all countries including India and China around the year 2000, there's still a lot of chlorine left in the atmosphere," Professor Susan Solomon, one of the study's authors, told the BBC. "It has a lifetime of about 50 to100 years, so it is starting to slowly decay and the ozone will slowly recover. We don't expect to see a complete recovery until about 2050 or 2060 but we are starting to see that in September the ozone hole is not as bad as it used to be."

Scientists are calling the new study a historic finding for the effort to mitigate the effects of climate change.

"This is the first convincing evidence that the healing of the Antarctic ozone hole has now started," Dr. Markus Rex from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany told the BBC. "Right now the state of the ozone layer is still really bad, but I find it very important that we know the Montreal Protocol is working and has an effect on the size of the hole and that is a big step forward."

Via BBC

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