Geneva: The atmosphere will take up to 15 years longer than previously expected to recover from pollution and repair its ozone hole over the southern hemisphere, the United Nations' weather organization said Friday.
Thinning in the ozone layer — due to chemical compounds leaked from refrigerators, air conditioners and other devices — exposes the Earth to harmful solar rays.
Too much ultraviolet radiation can cause skin cancer and destroy tiny plants at the beginning of the food chain.
Scientists concluded that it would take until 2065, instead of 2050 as previously expected, for the ozone layer to recover and the hole over the Antarctic to close.
"The Antarctic ozone hole has not become more severe since the late 1990s, but large ozone holes are expected to occur for decades to come," ozone specialist Geir Braathen said.
The ozone hole, a thinner-than-normal area in the upper stratosphere's radiation-absorbing gases, has formed each year since the mid-1980s at the end of the Antarctic winter in August, and generally is at its biggest in late September.
Experts said they extended the projected recovery because chlorofluorocarbons (CFC), would continue to leak into the atmosphere from air conditioners, aerosol spray cans and other equipment for years to come.
But there was cause for celebration, they said, noting a decline in CFCs in the first two atmospheric layers above Earth.
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