Delay in recovery of the Antarctic ozone hole from unexpected CFC-11 emissions

Abstract

The Antarctic ozone hole is decreasing in size but this recovery will be affected by atmospheric variability and any unexpected changes in chlorinated source gas emissions. Here, using model simulations, we show that the ozone hole will largely cease to occur by 2065 given compliance with the Montreal Protocol. If the unusual meteorology of 2002 is repeated, an ozone-hole-free-year could occur as soon as the early 2020s by some metrics. The recently discovered increase in CFC-11 emissions of ~ 13 Gg yr−1 may delay recovery. So far the impact on ozone is small, but if these emissions indicate production for foam use much more CFC-11 may be leaked in the future. Assuming such production over 10 years, disappearance of the ozone hole will be delayed by a few years, although there are significant uncertainties. Continued, substantial future CFC-11 emissions of 67 Gg yr−1 would delay Antarctic ozone recovery by well over a decade.

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Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Dhomse, SS https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3854-5383 Feng, W https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9907-9120 Montzka, SA Hossaini, R Keeble, J Pyle, JA Daniel, JS Chipperfield, MP https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6803-4149
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© The Author(s) 2019. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Dates:	Accepted: 20 November 2019 Published (online): 19 December 2019 Published: 19 December 2019
Institution:	The University of Leeds
Academic Units:	The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Inst for Climate & Atmos Science (ICAS) (Leeds) The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > National Centre for Atmos Science (NCAS) (Leeds)
Funding Information:	Funder Grant number NERC NE/R001782/1
Depositing User:	Symplectic Publications
Date Deposited:	21 Nov 2019 12:27
Last Modified:	25 Jun 2023 22:03
Status:	Published
Publisher:	Nature Research
Identification Number:	10.1038/s41467-019-13717-x
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:153736

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Delay in recovery of the Antarctic ozone hole from unexpected CFC-11 emissions

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