The Full Story
In 1985, three British scientists at the British Antarctic Survey, Joe Farman, Brian Gardiner, and Jonathan Shanklin, published a paper that changed the world. They had discovered a hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica. And it was growing.
They found it using equipment so old it was practically held together with tape. A Dobson spectrophotometer, a device invented in the 1920s, sitting in a research station at Halley Bay in one of the most remote places on Earth. They had been measuring ozone levels since the 1950s. Year after year, the readings dropped. By 1984, the numbers were so low the scientists initially thought their instruments were broken.
They weren't broken. The ozone layer was disappearing.
NASA had the same data. Their Nimbus-7 satellite had been measuring ozone from space. But NASA's quality-control software had been programmed to flag readings that seemed impossibly low and set them aside as likely instrument errors. The evidence was there, but the machines had treated it as a mistake. After the British paper, NASA reprocessed the raw data and confirmed the hole was real.
Three British scientists with decades-old equipment, working in a hut in Antarctica, spotted what the most advanced space agency on Earth had set aside. Their paper triggered the Montreal Protocol of 1987, the most successful international environmental agreement ever signed. Nations across the world agreed to ban the chemicals destroying the ozone layer.
The ozone layer is healing. Because three people in Antarctica refused to ignore what the data was telling them.
Why This Matters
The discovery of the ozone hole led directly to the Montreal Protocol, which has been called the most successful environmental treaty in history. Without the persistence of three British Antarctic Survey scientists using basic equipment, the damage could have continued unchecked for years. It is a powerful reminder that ordinary scientists doing careful, patient work can change the course of history.
Key Facts
- ✓Joe Farman (1930-2013), Brian Gardiner, and Jonathan Shanklin were the three authors of the landmark 1985 paper on Antarctic ozone depletion. All three were scientists at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). (Nature, 16 May 1985, Vol. 315, pp. 207-210; BAS records; Royal Society obituary for Farman)
- ✓The paper was published in Nature on 16 May 1985, titled "Large losses of total ozone in Antarctica reveal seasonal ClOx/NOx interaction." (Nature archives, citation verified)
- ✓The measurements were taken at the Halley Research Station (specifically Halley Bay station), operated by the British Antarctic Survey on the Brunt Ice Shelf, Antarctica. (BAS official records; Nature paper)
- ✓The primary instrument used was a Dobson ozone spectrophotometer, a ground-based instrument that measures ozone concentration by analysing the absorption of solar ultraviolet radiation. The Dobson spectrophotometer is a relatively simple, well-established instrument first developed in the 1920s by Gordon Dobson at Oxford. (BAS records; WMO ozone monitoring documentation)
- ✓NASA's Nimbus-7 satellite, launched in October 1978, carried the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) which was monitoring global ozone levels from orbit. The satellite had been collecting data over Antarctica that showed the same ozone depletion. (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center records; multiple scientific sources)
- ✓NASA's quality control (QC) software was programmed to flag ozone readings below approximately 180 Dobson Units as likely instrument errors, since such low values had never been observed before. These extreme readings were automatically excluded from processed data sets. When NASA's scientists went back and reprocessed the raw TOMS data after the BAS publication, they confirmed the ozone hole was real and that their own data showed it. (NASA Goddard archives; Stolarski et al. 1986; widely documented in the history of ozone science)
- ⚠Correction: the video title says NASA "deleted" the data. That is too strong. NASA's quality-control software flagged the impossibly low readings and set them aside as likely errors; the raw data was retained, and after the BAS paper NASA reprocessed it and confirmed the hole was real. The honest framing is flagged-and-set-aside, then reprocessed, not deleted. NASA did begin some internal investigation of the anomalous readings before Farman's publication, but the BAS paper forced the issue into the public domain. That BAS published first, and their ground-based instrument caught what the satellite's computers were programmed to dismiss, is accurate and verified by NASA's own accounts.
- ✓The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer was signed on 16 September 1987 in Montreal, Canada. It entered into force on 1 January 1989. (United Nations Treaty Collection; UNEP records)
- ✓As of 2024, the Montreal Protocol has been ratified by 198 parties (197 UN member states plus the European Union), making it the first and only treaty in United Nations history to achieve universal ratification. (UNEP Ozone Secretariat; United Nations records)
- ✓The ozone layer is recovering. According to the 2022 Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion (WMO/UNEP), mid-latitude ozone is expected to recover to 1980 levels by approximately 2040, Arctic ozone by approximately 2045, and the Antarctic ozone hole by approximately 2066. (WMO/UNEP Scientific Assessment Panel, 2022)
- ✓The "World Avoided" scenario, modelled by NASA Goddard (Newman et al., 2009), projected that without the Montreal Protocol, the ozone layer would have collapsed globally by 2050, resulting in an estimated 443 million additional cases of skin cancer, 2.3 million additional skin cancer deaths, and approximately 2.5 degrees Celsius of additional global warming from uncontrolled CFC emissions. (Newman et al., "What would have happened to the ozone layer if chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) had not been regulated?", Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 2009)
- ✓The unit of measurement for total column ozone is the Dobson Unit (DU), named after Gordon Dobson. Normal ozone concentrations range from approximately 220-460 DU depending on latitude and season. The Antarctic ozone hole is defined as the area where total column ozone drops below 220 DU. The BAS measurements showed values well below 200 DU and dropping. (WMO; NASA Ozone Watch)
- ⚠"A billion-dollar satellite" is narrative compression. The Nimbus-7 satellite programme cost approximately $98 million in 1978 dollars (approximately $450-500 million in 2024 dollars). The broader Nimbus programme (seven satellites, 1964-1978) cost significantly more, and the overall NASA Earth observation programme monitoring the atmosphere was a multi-billion-dollar enterprise. The contrast between the scale of NASA's investment and BAS's ground-based instrument is factually accurate in spirit if not in the precise dollar figure for the individual satellite.