Polar Ozone Depletion (Nobel Lecture)

Abstract

Cause and result can be geographically widely separated. This fact is corroborated by the finding that the annually recurring ozone hole over Antarctica, which has been steadily increasing in size since 1985, is predominantly due to anthropogenic emissions from the Northern Hemisphere. How the realization dawned that it is primarily the chlorine atoms released by photochemical reactions of CFCs in the upper stratosphere that destroy the ozone shield is described by M. J. Molina in his Nobel Lecture.