CFC11 emissions decline after crackdown
10th February 2021USA: Global levels of the banned ozone-depleting chemical CFC11 are nearly back to pre-2008 levels after an unexpected recent spike in emissions.
Once commonly used for refrigeration, CFC11 and other CFCs are banned under the Montreal Protocol but in 2018 a team of scientists reported a concerning spike in global emissions of the chemical beginning in 2013. In 2019, a second team reported that a significant portion of the emissions could be traced to eastern China, predominately the Shandong and Hebie provinces.
Subsequent investigations by the Environmental Investigation Agency found evidence of the illegal production and continued use of of CFC11 in the polyurethane foam sector in China.
According to a new study by scientists at MIT, the University of Bristol (UK), and other institutions in South Korea, the US, Japan, Australia, and Switzerland, emissions have quickly dropped back to much lower levels, putting the recovery of the stratospheric ozone layer back on track.
The teams report that global annual emissions of CFC11 into the atmosphere have declined sharply, by about 20,000 US tons, from 2018 to 2019. The researchers traced a substantial fraction of the global emission reductions to the very same regions of eastern China where they had previously reported the original spike. The researchers insist the results are consistent with evidence that the country has taken successful actions to stamp out illegal production of this ozone-depleting chemical.
“This is tremendously encouraging,” said Ronald Prinn, the director of the Center for Global Change Science at MIT and a co-author on both papers. “If emissions of CFC11 had continued to rise or even just levelled off, there would have been a much bigger problem building up. The global monitoring networks really caught this spike in time, and subsequent actions have lowered emissions before they became a real threat to recovery of the ozone layer.”
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