Climate Changed
High-Flying Whodunit: Who's Cheating on the Ozone Treaty?
- Chemical spike in atmosphere suggests illegal CFC production
- Findings test the success of historic environmental treaty
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Scientists have stumbled on to an atmospheric detective story: Someone in East Asia appears to be cheating on a three-decade-old global environmental treaty that banned ozone-eating chemicals.
Researchers from the U.S., U.K. and the Netherlands discovered new emissions of a refrigerant that’s responsible for about a quarter of chlorine reaching the radiation-blocking ozone layer, according to a paper published Wednesday in Nature.