Success of Montreal Protocol Demonstrated by Comparing High-Quality UV Measurements with "World Avoided" Calculations from Two Chemistry-Climate Models - INSU - Institut national des sciences de l'Univers Accéder directement au contenu
Article Dans Une Revue Scientific Reports Année : 2019

Success of Montreal Protocol Demonstrated by Comparing High-Quality UV Measurements with "World Avoided" Calculations from Two Chemistry-Climate Models

Richard Mckenzie
  • Fonction : Auteur
Germar Bernhard
  • Fonction : Auteur
Ben Liley
  • Fonction : Auteur
Patrick Disterhoft
  • Fonction : Auteur
Steve Rhodes
  • Fonction : Auteur
Alkiviadis Bais
  • Fonction : Auteur
Olaf Morgenstern
  • Fonction : Auteur
Paul Newman
  • Fonction : Auteur
Luke Oman
  • Fonction : Auteur

Résumé

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.
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insu-03686272 , version 1 (03-06-2022)

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Richard Mckenzie, Germar Bernhard, Ben Liley, Patrick Disterhoft, Steve Rhodes, et al.. Success of Montreal Protocol Demonstrated by Comparing High-Quality UV Measurements with "World Avoided" Calculations from Two Chemistry-Climate Models. Scientific Reports, 2019, 9, ⟨10.1038/s41598-019-48625-z⟩. ⟨insu-03686272⟩
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