World Ozone Layer Day 2020: Know The Significance Of This Day

Today marks the World Ozone Layer Day, the life protecting life-protecting layer in the earth’s atmosphere. Know why the day is observed.

New Delhi: World Ozone Layer Day is observed every year on September 16th to remember the life-protecting layer in the earth’s atmosphere. This year’s slogan is “Ozone For Life”.“On Ozone Day we celebrate 35 years of the Vienna Convention to Protect the Ozone Layer and its Montreal Protocol, which united the world to cut out gases creating a hole in the ozone layer. We need this same sense of purpose and collaboration to address all environmental threats," Inger Anderson, Executive Director, UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) said in a video message for World Ozone Day. In the 1970s it was observed by scientists that the ozone layer was depleting because of the gases used in air conditioning and refrigerators. This posed as a danger as the harmful UV rays from the sun could then enter the earth and cause severe health risks like skin cancer. “In 1985, the world’s governments adopted the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer. Under the Convention’s Montreal Protocol, governments, scientists, and industry worked together to cut out 99 percent of all ozone-depleting substances,” the UN Environment website reads. In 2019, the Kigali Amendment came into force as a follow-up to the Montreal Protocol, which is meant to reduce greenhouse gases which cause global warming, the latest cause of worry for nations. This year, due to the pandemic there was a reduction in pollution which hastened the healing on the life-protecting layer some experts believe. Although a hole which is about three times the size of Greenland was found, it was a "record-level" ozone hole over the Arctic - the biggest since 2011 but it has now closed according to the UN World Meteorological Organisation. Even though, the coronavirus lockdowns resulted in a significant reduction in air pollution, some scientists said, the occurrence of the hole healing "was completely unrelated to COVID". A report from the United Nations says that the ozone layer could be totally healed by 2060 if the pollution is reduced.