‘The most startling lesson from the ozone hole is just how quickly our planet can change.’
In 1984, scientists in Cambridge discovered something shocking.
They were looking at data collected in Antarctica, originally used to help predict the weather. They noticed that one layer of the atmosphere—the ozone layer—was thinning at certain times of the year, creating a hole above Antarctica.
Ozone is a layer in the atmosphere that acts like a sunscreen, blocking some of the sun’s most harmful radiation.
Ozone is essential to life on earth, so the hole was a big problem. Scientists then began working to find out why the whole was appearing.