• Question: Will the ozone layer ever break? What would happen if it does?

    Asked by Adam to Aileen, Caroline, Christopher, Rehemat, Stephanie, Stephen on 7 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Aileen Baird

      Aileen Baird answered on 7 Mar 2018:

      I’m afraid I don’t really know the answer to this one! Hopefully one of the other scientists can answer this and then I can learn something too!

    • Photo: Christopher Nankervis

      Christopher Nankervis answered on 7 Mar 2018:

      The ozone layer is expected to recover to normal conditions within the next few decades. If we hadn’t have taken action to protect it, damaging levels of intense sunlight would increase the rate of cancer and harm living plants and animals on Earth.

    • Photo: Stephanie Mann

      Stephanie Mann answered on 8 Mar 2018:

      The ozone has shown it’s been depleting since the 1970s but it won’t ever completely dissolve. And luckily there have been global efforts to protect the ozone layer thanks to people realising how important it is for our protection! Thankfully we are now starting to see the similar catastrophic effects climate change may have because of other emissions into the atmosphere!

    • Photo: Stephen Twomlow

      Stephen Twomlow answered on 8 Mar 2018:

      Hopefully we have learned our lessons and reduced the emission of the various chemicals that created holes in our ozone layer. However, if it did break up we need more than factor 50 sunscreen to survive – we would probably burn very very badly if we went outside without protection – but we might struggle to find anything to eat

Comments