In the period from 2000-2015, the hole in the ozone layer shrank by more than 4 million square kilometers—nearly a billion acres—according to a new report in the journal Science.
During the 1980s and into the 1990s, news of a massive hole in the ozone layer caused worldwide panic, stoked by everything from rumors of sheep being blinded by increased atmospheric radiation to the fear of a skin cancer pandemic and even comparisons to “AIDS from the sky.”