Success of Montreal Protocol Demonstrated by Comparing High-Quality UV Measurements with “World Avoided” Calculations from Two Chemistry-Climate Models
The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer has been hailed as the most successful environmental treaty ever (https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/montreal-protocol-triumph-treaty). Yet, although our main concern about ozone depletion is the subsequent increase i...
Published in: | Scientific Reports |
---|---|
Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , |
Format: | Text |
Language: | English |
Published: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2019
|
Subjects: | |
Online Access: | http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6722083/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31481668 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-48625-z |
id |
ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:6722083 |
---|---|
record_format |
openpolar |
spelling |
ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:6722083 2023-05-15T14:02:43+02:00 Success of Montreal Protocol Demonstrated by Comparing High-Quality UV Measurements with “World Avoided” Calculations from Two Chemistry-Climate Models McKenzie, Richard Bernhard, Germar Liley, Ben Disterhoft, Patrick Rhodes, Steve Bais, Alkiviadis Morgenstern, Olaf Newman, Paul Oman, Luke Brogniez, Colette Simic, Stana 2019-09-03 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6722083/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31481668 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-48625-z en eng Nature Publishing Group UK http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6722083/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31481668 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-48625-z © The Author(s) 2019 Open Access 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/. CC-BY Article Text 2019 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-48625-z 2019-09-22T00:18:23Z The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer has been hailed as the most successful environmental treaty ever (https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/montreal-protocol-triumph-treaty). Yet, although our main concern about ozone depletion is the subsequent increase in harmful solar UV radiation at the Earth’s surface, no studies to date have demonstrated its effectiveness in that regard. Here we use long-term UV Index (UVI) data derived from high-quality UV spectroradiometer measurements to demonstrate its success in curbing increases in UV radiation. Without this landmark agreement, UVI values would have increased at mid-latitude locations by approximately 20% between the early 1990s and today and would approximately quadruple at mid-latitudes by 2100. In contrast, an analysis of UVI data from multiple clean-air sites shows that maximum daily UVI values have remained essentially constant over the last ~20 years in all seasons, and may even have decreased slightly in the southern hemisphere, especially in Antarctica, where effects of ozone depletion were larger. Reconstructions of the UVI from total ozone data show evidence of increasing UVI levels in the 1980s, but unfortunately, there are no high-quality UV measurements available prior to the early 1990s to confirm these increases with direct observations. Text Antarc* Antarctica PubMed Central (PMC) Scientific Reports 9 1 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
PubMed Central (PMC) |
op_collection_id |
ftpubmed |
language |
English |
topic |
Article |
spellingShingle |
Article McKenzie, Richard Bernhard, Germar Liley, Ben Disterhoft, Patrick Rhodes, Steve Bais, Alkiviadis Morgenstern, Olaf Newman, Paul Oman, Luke Brogniez, Colette Simic, Stana Success of Montreal Protocol Demonstrated by Comparing High-Quality UV Measurements with “World Avoided” Calculations from Two Chemistry-Climate Models |
topic_facet |
Article |
description |
The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer has been hailed as the most successful environmental treaty ever (https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/montreal-protocol-triumph-treaty). Yet, although our main concern about ozone depletion is the subsequent increase in harmful solar UV radiation at the Earth’s surface, no studies to date have demonstrated its effectiveness in that regard. Here we use long-term UV Index (UVI) data derived from high-quality UV spectroradiometer measurements to demonstrate its success in curbing increases in UV radiation. Without this landmark agreement, UVI values would have increased at mid-latitude locations by approximately 20% between the early 1990s and today and would approximately quadruple at mid-latitudes by 2100. In contrast, an analysis of UVI data from multiple clean-air sites shows that maximum daily UVI values have remained essentially constant over the last ~20 years in all seasons, and may even have decreased slightly in the southern hemisphere, especially in Antarctica, where effects of ozone depletion were larger. Reconstructions of the UVI from total ozone data show evidence of increasing UVI levels in the 1980s, but unfortunately, there are no high-quality UV measurements available prior to the early 1990s to confirm these increases with direct observations. |
format |
Text |
author |
McKenzie, Richard Bernhard, Germar Liley, Ben Disterhoft, Patrick Rhodes, Steve Bais, Alkiviadis Morgenstern, Olaf Newman, Paul Oman, Luke Brogniez, Colette Simic, Stana |
author_facet |
McKenzie, Richard Bernhard, Germar Liley, Ben Disterhoft, Patrick Rhodes, Steve Bais, Alkiviadis Morgenstern, Olaf Newman, Paul Oman, Luke Brogniez, Colette Simic, Stana |
author_sort |
McKenzie, Richard |
title |
Success of Montreal Protocol Demonstrated by Comparing High-Quality UV Measurements with “World Avoided” Calculations from Two Chemistry-Climate Models |
title_short |
Success of Montreal Protocol Demonstrated by Comparing High-Quality UV Measurements with “World Avoided” Calculations from Two Chemistry-Climate Models |
title_full |
Success of Montreal Protocol Demonstrated by Comparing High-Quality UV Measurements with “World Avoided” Calculations from Two Chemistry-Climate Models |
title_fullStr |
Success of Montreal Protocol Demonstrated by Comparing High-Quality UV Measurements with “World Avoided” Calculations from Two Chemistry-Climate Models |
title_full_unstemmed |
Success of Montreal Protocol Demonstrated by Comparing High-Quality UV Measurements with “World Avoided” Calculations from Two Chemistry-Climate Models |
title_sort |
success of montreal protocol demonstrated by comparing high-quality uv measurements with “world avoided” calculations from two chemistry-climate models |
publisher |
Nature Publishing Group UK |
publishDate |
2019 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6722083/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31481668 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-48625-z |
genre |
Antarc* Antarctica |
genre_facet |
Antarc* Antarctica |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6722083/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31481668 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-48625-z |
op_rights |
© The Author(s) 2019 Open Access 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/. |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-48625-z |
container_title |
Scientific Reports |
container_volume |
9 |
container_issue |
1 |
_version_ |
1766273141219262464 |