Monitoring the success of implementation of the Montreal Protocol in India with satellite measurements

Abstract

The success of the implementation of the Montreal Protocol in India and its impact on the observed trend in total and stratospheric ozone at different Indian latitude belts have been examined using satellite data. Although the effective enforcement of the Montreal Protocol can be monitored through satellite data, it is difficult to attribute the observed slow-down in stratospheric ozone depletion entirely to the success of the Montreal Protocol, as a large number of natural and anthropogenic factors also influence the appropriate stratospheric ozone chemistry.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to acknowledge their gratitude to the reviewers for their valuable suggestions, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for providing Total Ozone Monitoring Spectrometer data (ftp://toms.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/); and J. R. Ziemke and coworkers of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center for providing the convective cloud differential data. Figure 3, representing the trend of consumption and production of CFC, halons and HCFC in India has been taken from the website of United Nations Environment Programme, Division of Technology, Industry and Economics, Ozone Action Programme (http://www.unep.fr/ozonaction/information/trends). One of the authors, Nandita Ganguly, acknowledges Prof. J. N. Goswami, Director of Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, for providing her with library facilities.