The Ozone Treaty That Actually Worked
In 1987 the world signed the Montreal Protocol to phase out the chemicals eating the ozone layer, and it became the most successful environmental treaty ever made. This is the story of how a global panic over aerosol cans turned into rare, measurable planetary healing — and what the recovering ozone hole teaches us about fixing shared problems.
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Satellite algorithms initially ignored the ozone hole because they were programmed to dismiss low readings as errors.
A healthy atmosphere contains three hundred Dobson Units while the ozone hole falls below two hundred twenty.
The Montreal Protocol mandates specific industrial timetables to phase out chlorofluorocarbons and halons.
Atmospheric ozone is currently recovering at a rate of one point five four percent every decade.
The Kigali Amendment aims to prevent up to zero point five degrees Celsius of warming by twenty one hundred.
Phasing out hydrofluorocarbons by eighty five percent by twenty fifty serves as a blueprint for climate action.
- 01Intro1 min
- 02From Theory to Crisis3 min
- 03The Mechanics of the Protocol2 min
- 04Measuring the Recovery2 min
- 05The Kigali Evolution2 min
- 06Outro1 min
- Montreal Protocol - Wikipedia
- Watching the Ozone Hole Before and After the Montreal Protocol - NASA Science
- Timeline - Ozone Secretariat
- The story behind the discovery of the ozone hole
- NASA Data Aids Ozone Hole's Journey to Recovery
- Do look up: how science and international cooperation closed the ozone hole
- Ozone Protection: A Walk Through History - epa nepis
- 2026 Antarctic OMPS and MERRA-2 Ozone - NASA Ozone Watch
- 2026 Antarctic OMPS and MERRA-2 Ozone
- Ambitious Replenishment of the Multilateral Fund for ...
- Background:
- Ozone stratospheric trends from regional Bayesian composite ...
- The 2026 WMO/UNEP Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion
- Cooling China without warming the planet: climate and co-benefits of HFC phase-down
- Updated global and regional trends of stratospheric ozone ...
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