Imagine Earth with 2/3 of ozone gone...
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- julesrs007
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Imagine the year 2065. Two-thirds of Earth’s ozone is gone. The infamous ozone hole over Antarctica is a year-round fixture with a twin over the North Pole.
People living in mid-latitude cities like Washington, D.C., get sunburned after five minutes. DNA-mutating UV radiation is up 650 percent, with likely harmful effects on plants, animals and human skin cancer rates.
Such is the world we would have inherited if 193 nations had not agreed to ban ozone-depleting substances, according to atmospheric chemists at NASA, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency in Bilthoven. The researchers have unveiled new computer simulations this week of a worldwide disaster that humans managed to avoid.
In retrospect, the researchers say, the Montreal Protocol was a “remarkable international agreement that should be studied by those involved with global warming and the attempts to reach international agreement on that topic.”
PHOTO: The ozone layer over the far northern hemisphere -- once robust compared to the Antarctic concentrations -- would have developed a similar ozone hole by the 2020s without the Montreal Protocol. Reds represent healthy ozone concentrations; blues show depletion. Credit: NASA Goddard
People living in mid-latitude cities like Washington, D.C., get sunburned after five minutes. DNA-mutating UV radiation is up 650 percent, with likely harmful effects on plants, animals and human skin cancer rates.
Such is the world we would have inherited if 193 nations had not agreed to ban ozone-depleting substances, according to atmospheric chemists at NASA, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency in Bilthoven. The researchers have unveiled new computer simulations this week of a worldwide disaster that humans managed to avoid.
In retrospect, the researchers say, the Montreal Protocol was a “remarkable international agreement that should be studied by those involved with global warming and the attempts to reach international agreement on that topic.”
PHOTO: The ozone layer over the far northern hemisphere -- once robust compared to the Antarctic concentrations -- would have developed a similar ozone hole by the 2020s without the Montreal Protocol. Reds represent healthy ozone concentrations; blues show depletion. Credit: NASA Goddard
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