Rogue CFC11 gases coming back into the atmosphere ?

Globally we are aware of three international treaties and agreements that have played a major role ensuring less environmental damage, promoting sustainability of the environment. They are the Paris Agreement, Stockholm Protocol and Montreal Protocol.

• The Paris Agreement is an agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, dealing with greenhouse-gas-emissions mitigation, adaptation, and finance, signed in 2016. It deals with Global rise in temperatures and measures to contain this by 2099.
• The Stockholm Protocol on Persistent Organic Pollutants, an international environmental treaty, signed in 2001 and effective from May 2004, that aims to eliminate or restrict the production and use of persistent organic pollutants. Pesticides and fertilizers that are harmful to humans like Endosulfan in Kerala was banned through this act.
• The Montreal Protocol on Substances that deplete the Ozone layer (like ChloroflouroCarbons, CFCs) is a landmark international agreement designed to protect the stratospheric ozone layer. The treaty was originally signed in 1987. The Ozone layer prevents the cancer causing ultra violet rays of the sun from entering the earth's atmosphere.
• Kyoto Protocol - The Kyoto Protocol is an international treaty which extends the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, based on the scientific consensus that (part one) global warming is occurring and (part two) it is extremely likely that human-made CO₂ emissions have predominantly caused it. It was adopted in 1997 and effective from 2005. The Paris Protocol was a result of the US' non-cooperation to sign on the Kyoto Protocol recommendations that wanted to limit green house gas emissions across the countries of the world.

A refrigerator assembly plant in Xingfu, China, pic courtesy, Nature.

Of late as reported by Nature magazine, (click here for the link), the Ozone layer, protected by the Montreal Protocol, returning back has been halted by almost half which has alarmed the scientists and ecologists. Somewhere in the world CFC gases are getting released into the atmosphere.

From 2008 till 2014, the re-emergence and rebuilding of the Ozone layer was at an annual rate of almost 0.8% while from 2014, it has been found to be growing at only half that rate. 

China's north east industrial area of Xingfu is known for assembling refrigeration equipment. Scientists with monitors in Korea and Japan have been able to detect higher doses of Trichloroflouro methane (CFC11), the most potent of all ozone depleting gases in the atmosphere, the production of which was discontinued globally from 2010. It is traced and reported that about 3000 tonnes annually of this CFC 11 gas is being released from Xingfu annually into the atmosphere since 2013 aggravating the situation and violating the international protocol. Another 4000T of rogue CFC11 emissions still remains to be identified, the origin of which needs to be accurately ascertained.

China has been officially communicated to ensure international agreements are followed in word and spirit. Hope China agrees to follow international conventions and protocols for the better future of humanity.  Click here for the paper published in Nature, lead authored by Mathew Rigby, University of Bristol, UK.

George.