There is a relationship between the Earth's Ozone layer and global warming, or is there?

The Earth's ozone hole is shrinking and is the smallest it has been since 1988

Here's a rare piece of good news about the environment: The giant hole in the Earth's protective ozone layer is shrinking and has shriveled to its smallest peak since 1988, NASA scientists said.

The largest the hole became this year was about 7.6 million square miles wide, about two and a half times the size of the United States, in September. But it was still 1.3 million square miles smaller than last year, scientists said, and has shrunk more since September.

Warmer-than-usual weather conditions in the stratosphere are to thank for the shrinkage since 2016, as the warmer air helped fend off chemicals like chlorine and bromine that eat away at the ozone layer, scientists said. But the hole's overall reduction can be traced to global efforts since the mid-1980s to ban the emission of ozone-depleting chemicals.

"Weather conditions over Antarctica were a bit weaker and led to warmer temperatures, which slowed down ozone loss," said Paul A. Newman, chief Earth scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. "It's like hurricanes. Some years there are fewer hurricanes that come onshore . . . this is a year in which the weather conditions led to better ozone [formation]." Read more...

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