That means we're moving towards regaining the ozone layer's global coverage and protection from the harmful ultraviolet radiation released by the Sun. This was an agreement made in 1980 between dozens of countries (it's now up to 116) which provided the framework for mobilizing efforts worldwide to study the ozone layer. It was followed by the Montreal Protocol in 1987, a treaty that saw participating countries phase out the production of substances responsible for depleting the ozone layer. The WMO notes that if we keep this up, the ozone layer could recover to 1980s levels by the middle of the 21st century. The depth of the 2024 Antarctic ozone hole – which appears over the Antarctic each year in spring and shows especially dramatic thinning of the ozone layer – was below the 1990–2020 average.