May 16, 1985

Ozone depletion

Nature publishes the British Antarctic Survey's Antarctic ozone-loss discovery

The satellites had seen it too. Their software treated the lowest readings as probably bad data, so the discovery came from handwritten records kept in Antarctica.

Volume 315, pages 207–210

The 16 May 1985 issue of Nature carried Joe Farman, Brian Gardiner and Jonathan Shanklin's paper, “Large losses of total ozone in Antarctica reveal seasonal ClOx/NOx interaction.”

Using long-running measurements from the British Antarctic Survey stations at Halley and Faraday, the authors reported that Antarctic spring ozone had fallen dramatically and argued that ordinary one-dimensional global models were inadequate.

A decade of backlog

Springtime values had begun declining around the late 1970s. By October 1984 the ozone layer over Halley was only about two-thirds as thick as in earlier decades, against expectations of changes of a few percent.

Shanklin helped expose the pattern by working through a backlog of handwritten Dobson-spectrophotometer observations, which showed the low readings were systematic rather than instrument error. The record itself ran back to the 1956 International Geophysical Year — it was not a purpose-built search for a hole.

What the paper did and did not say

It proposed a chemical connection to increasing inorganic chlorine under Antarctica's uniquely cold stratospheric conditions, but did not present the complete polar-cloud chemistry that later fieldwork established.

It also did not announce a literal opening in the atmosphere; the term “ozone hole” and the satellite maps became common afterwards. NASA researchers soon revisited satellite readings that automatic quality-control software had flagged as implausibly low, and found corroborating Antarctic data.

Even the date is looser than it looks: 16 May is the printed issue date for volume 315, while Nature's current metadata gives “Published: 01 May 1985.”

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 6 sources 2 audit passes Traditional date

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

Traditional date. This date is the conventional one, not one fixed by a contemporary record.

What the sources leave uncertain

May 16 is the issue date printed for Nature volume 315 and the traditional anniversary. Nature's current metadata separately says “Published: 01 May 1985,” so “announced on May 16” is less precise than “appeared in the May 16 issue.”
The 1985 paper described a dramatic Antarctic ozone decline. The vivid term “ozone hole” and satellite maps became common afterward; the paper itself did not announce a literal opening in the atmosphere.