Wildfires

Australia fires damaged ozone layer - caused major warming

Australia’s fire season in late 2019 and early 2020 was extreme. It blew smoke some 20 miles into the sky, not unlike what a nuclear blast might cause. Smoke from the fires circled the globe and hovered in plumes over the Pacific.

Now, a study published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports suggests the smoky aerosols caused the highest temperatures in the stratosphere in about three decades and probably damaged the ozone layer — which has been slowly recovering since the substances that deplete it were largely phased out through the 1987 Montreal Protocol.