• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 618 4351
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Ozone-Protecting Treaty Delayed First Ice-Free Arctic Summer By Up To 15 Years

May 25, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

The Montreal Protocol was a landmark international agreement for the benefit of all humankind. It is among the only United Nations treaties ratified by every country in the world, designed to protect the ozone layer by phasing out harmful chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons. And it is working. Since it entered into force in 1989, the ozone has been slowly recovering, and now researchers believe that it is also delaying the first summer in the Arctic where no ice is present.

Over the last 40 years, about half of all Arctic Sea Ice has gone for good. The summer Arctic sea ice extent is shrinking by one-eighth every decade and we are getting closer to the point of a completely ice-free Arctic. But the Montreal Protocol has delayed that scenario by as much as 15 years, according to new research.

Advertisement

Ozone-depleting substances (ODSs) not only destroy the ozone layer, which protects us from the dangerous ultraviolet light from the Sun, but they are also powerful greenhouse gases. They are tens of thousands of times more powerful at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. Thanks to the Protocol, their atmospheric concentrations have steeply declined, and this has impacted global warming.

“The first ice-free Arctic summer – with the Arctic Ocean practically free of sea ice – will be a major milestone in the process of climate change, and our findings were a surprise to us,” co-author Lorenzo Polvani, from Columbia University, said in a statement. “Our results show that the climate benefits from the Montreal Protocol are not in some faraway future: the Protocol is delaying the melting of Arctic sea ice at this very moment. That’s what a successful climate treaty does: it yields measurable results within a few decades of its implementation.”

The estimate from their work shows that without the Montreal Protocol being enacted, the global mean surface temperature in 2050 would be around 0.5°C (0.9°F) warmer and the Arctic polar cap would be almost 1°C (1.8°F) warmer. As we are trying to keep the global mean surface temperature below 1.5°C (2.7°F), such an increase would have been terrible. 

“This important climate mitigation stems entirely from the reduced greenhouse gas warming from the regulated ODSs, with the avoided stratospheric ozone losses playing no role,” added co-author Mark England. 

Advertisement

“While ODSs aren’t as abundant as other greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide, they can have a real impact on global warming. ODSs have particularly powerful effects in the Arctic, and they were an important driver of Arctic climate change in the second half of the 20th century. While stopping these effects was not the primary goal of the Montreal Protocol, it has been a fantastic by-product.”

The work shows the beneficial consequences of treaties that are taken seriously and enforced. 

The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Take Five: Big in Japan
  2. Struggle over Egypt’s Juhayna behind arrest of founder, son – Amnesty
  3. Turkey seeks 40 F-16 jets to upgrade Air Force -sources
  4. NASA’s $180 Million Plan For Destroying The ISS Revealed

Source Link: Ozone-Protecting Treaty Delayed First Ice-Free Arctic Summer By Up To 15 Years

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Should We All Be Meditating? Find Out In Issue 11 Of CURIOUS – Out Now
  • In 1872 The Mary Celeste Was Found Completely Abandoned. What Happened To Its Crew?
  • TWIS: An “Alien Message” From Mars Has Been Received, Evidence Of Non-Binary People In Prehistoric Europe Unearthed, And Much More This Week
  • At 9,400 Years Old, Çatalhöyük Is One Of The Oldest Buildings Still Standing
  • Legendary Sword Of Tipu Sultan Becomes Most Expensive Sword In History
  • Is It Normal To Talk To Yourself?
  • Bizarre Insect Filmed In The Amazon Is Strangely Beautiful
  • World’s Oldest Homo Sapiens Footprint Identified On South Africa’s Cape South Coast
  • Historic Great Plains Bison Slaughter Had Surprising Lasting Consequences For Native Americans
  • Better Sleep For Teens Can Be Achieved With Different Social Media Use
  • This Weekend A Nearby Supernova Is Visible Even With A Small Telescope
  • What’s The Oldest Surviving City In The World?
  • Jade Burial Suits – Why The Ancient Chinese Lay Their Dead To Rest In Such Opulence
  • What Happens If You Touch Mercury?
  • Early Universe Symmetry Violations Could Explain Why Matter Exceeds Anti-Matter Today
  • Over 5,000 Deep Sea Creatures Found In Area At Risk Of Rare Metal Mining
  • Composition Of Roman Perfume Identified For First Time, And It Smelled Like Patchouli
  • Unit 731: New “Horror Bunker” From Japan’s WW2 Human Experimentation Camp Discovered
  • How Do You Reheat Rice? Carefully, Unless You Want Fried Rice Syndrome
  • We Just Took A Step Closer To Building The First Nuclear Clocks
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 618 4351
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2023 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version