Eli5: how can earth ozone layers heal itself even with our high pollution level?

Question

Eli5: how can earth ozone layers heal itself even with our high pollution level?

In: 5

Answer 1

It’s a very specific kind of pollution that depletes atmospheric ozone – a few types of free chlorofluorocarbons.

These “CFCs” were used as consumer-grade refrigerants and propellants in a lot of different applications up through the 1990s or so, but have since been replaced with similar compounds that have acceptably close performance but do not react with ozone.

With the target pollution greatly mitigated, the natural ozone production rate in the upper atmosphere has been able to repair the damage.

This was possible because it was a relatively cheap and easy fix to coordinate globally.