Do you remember that big issue with the ozone layer? Back before we could easily see all the other signs of climate change, the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica was a major signal that we were messing up our planet in a big way.
Thankfully, there’s this international agreement called the Montreal Protocol. It started in 1989 and it’s all about saving the ozone layer. It stopped us from releasing certain chemicals that were eating away at the ozone. Since then, the ozone layer has started getting better, and it should be back to how it was before the 1980s by 2066.
Here’s the good part: things are improving! But, there’s still a bit of healing left to do. While we’re waiting for the ozone layer to completely heal, we’ve noticed that the hole in it goes through cycles. It usually starts getting bigger around September, but then it gets smaller again during the winter months.
But things seem a bit different this year. Following the trend of more frequent upsetting climate news, the ozone layer hole is starting to show up earlier than usual this year.
Interestingly, this time it’s not our fault. We can attribute this occurrence to purely natural causes. In the previous year, the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted in a massive explosion.
This event triggered a big tsunami, caused a loud sonic boom, and released an unbelievably large amount of water vapor into the atmosphere. Because of this eruption, the atmosphere now holds about three times more water vapor than it typically does. And this excess water vapor is having a lasting impact on our ozone layer.
The cycle of the ozone layer hole getting bigger and then smaller is driven by clouds high up in the atmosphere. Water vapor in these clouds can create reactive chemicals that break down ozone.
As these clouds become more or less prominent during different times of the year due to changes in temperature, the hole responds by growing and shrinking. However, when you add a whole lot of extra water vapor into the ozone layer, you run into trouble. Scientists were aware that launching so much water vapor into the atmosphere would have long-term consequences, and now we’re finally seeing those effects in action.
Thankfully, this isn’t a permanent situation, but it could still cause problems in certain parts of the world. Researchers are particularly worried about the Southern Ocean, which has already suffered significant impacts from climate change. With Arctic sea ice currently at an all-time low for this time of year, having a gap in our atmospheric protective layer right over that region isn’t exactly the best news.
While we didn’t cause this specific issue, we are definitely the main contributors to the overall climate crisis that this situation is adding to. If we weren’t already dealing with record-breaking temperatures, the early widening of the ozone layer hole might not be such a big deal. But if we want things like this to matter less in the future, we have a lot of work ahead of us to improve the basic conditions.
