A group of atmospheric
scientists attending the
MOCA 2009 meeting in Montréal, Canada set out on a determined goal: to
find the building where the
Montréal Protocol
had been signed.
We were successful on our
second attempt! The protocol was signed at 1000 West Sherbrooke St.
(1000 Rue Sherbrooke Ouest) in a building now known as the
Mont-Royal Center. During Sept 1987 this building was home to the
International Civil Aviation Organization
(ICAO), a
specialized agency of the United Nations.
Oddly there is no plaque or other type of commemoration to the signing of
the protocol on public outdoor display at this historic site.
Photo credit: Rebecca Batchelor
Photo credit: Shigeo Yoden
After a 20 minute walk,
it was wonderful to hear Tom McElroy (sixth person from the left) proclaim
"this was the building where the signing occurred". Tom was present for the
signing of the Montréal Protocol on 16 Sept 1987!
Click here for
photographic evidence of Tom's presence at the signing.
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Initially we had headed to
the present day headquarters of ICAO, located close to
Palais des congrès,
the site of the MOCA meeting. With its array of flags and scaled
version of the SST Concorde aircraft, the present day ICAO headquarters
provided a number of nice photo opportunities:
Photo credit: Shigeo Yoden
Photo credit:
Farahnaz Khosrawi
Alas, the present day
headquarters of ICAO is not where history occurred. Several meetings
commemorating the signing of the protocol have been held at present day
headquarters. As we posed for the photos shown above, Tom McElroy noted
"this was not the building where the protocol was signed". Tom's statement
set off a determined effort to ascertain the actual location of the
building where the protocol was signed. The key element enabling us to
locate the building was a
PDF file Tom was able to find that provides a history of ICAO.
Click here to see a wonderful picture of Tom and colleagues taken at the
actual signing!
Photo credit: Shigeo Yoden
Being a determined group, we
went inside the present ICAO headquarters building to inquire about where
the protocol had been signed, to see if there was any type of
commemoration, etc. We were greeted by a wonderful model of the Air
France supersonic transport Concorde airplane. Susan Solomon
(pictured above) was particularly delighted at the sight of this aircraft
because
Harold Johnston, her PhD thesis advisor, had written a
paper in 1971 showing that the release of nitrogen oxides in the
exhaust of this class of aircraft could, under certain conditions, lead to
considerable reductions of Earth's protective ozone layer. This
finding led the U.S. government to establish the Climate Impact Assessment
Program (CIAP), the first research program to support
coordinated research in atmospheric composition.
CIAP produced
many of the pedestals that support present-day atmospheric chemistry.
The comprehensive research monographs issued by CIAP were the
precursor of the WMO/UNEP Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion reports
and
served as a model for the reports issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC).
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At the time
the Montréal Protocol was signed, Susan Solomon was leading the
National Ozone
Expedition in Antarctica that provided the first observational evidence
that industrial chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) cause the Antarctic ozone hole.
The Montréal Protocol was put in place based on scientific evidence that
CFCs and other industrial halocarbons were leading to an erosion of the
global ozone layer. As evidence emerged linking anthropogenic
halocarbons to polar ozone depletion,
a
series of amendments considerably strengthened the original provisions
of the protocol.
The Montréal Protocol and
its amendments have been extraordinarily successful in
limiting the abundance of ozone depleting substances.
It is generally not appreciated that this legislation has also had
a profoundly important benefit for limiting global climate change
because, in the absence of regulation,
the greenhouse gas warming due to ozone depleting substances would today
nearly equal that of carbon dioxide. The regulation of ozone
depleting substances initiated by the Montréal Protocol has led to initial
signs of
recovery of the Antarctic ozone hole as well as the
mid-latitude ozone layer. A thorough history of the Montréal
Protocol can be found by following the links given at the
Center for International
Earth Science Information Network webpage.