James' World 2

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A diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease is typically followed by years of uncertainty, grief, and a painful decline into oblivion. But although there is so much researchers, still don’t understand about the disease and what drives it, scientists are making progress faster than ever before and providing patients and their families with options for both diagnosis and treatment.

Over the past few decades, researchers have begun to realize that Alzheimer’s is more than the tangles of tau proteins and clusters of amyloid plaque that are the defining biological signs of the disease. Today, as Esther Landhuis describes, with the help of detailed graphics, there are more than 100 ongoing trials aimed at slowing or even stopping disease progression, and they target a variety of underlying mechanisms. The first therapies that specifically home in on and break up amyloid plaques have already been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. In clinical trials, they slowed decline for some people with early Alzheimer’s, but, as Liz Seegert reports, the drugs also come with substantial risk and are not a one-size-fits-all solution.

Changes to daily habits, such as increased exercise and social interaction, better nutrition, and supplements, are another option to consider. Sara Harrison notes that although the results from studies are mixed, researchers hope that focusing on someone’s day-to-day health can delay onset of the worst symptoms of dementia. Such improvements aren’t available to everyone, however. Black Americans are twice as likely as white Americans to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or other dementias. Jyoti Madhusoodanan analyzes the substantial evidence that this higher rate is a direct result of systemic racism, environmental pollution, and other experiences related to discrimination.

The earlier someone is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, the sooner they can begin interventions and start to plan for the future. Blood tests can finally make this early detection easier. They’re not infallible, however. Cassandra Willyard explains that the currently available blood tests are less a screening tool and more part of a confirmatory approach, best for people already experiencing dementia symptoms.

The global incidence of Alzheimer’s is increasing at a rapid rate. In the U.S., more people than ever are being diagnosed, even as the number of care options dwindles. Tara Haelle explores the reasons for that and profiles one program aiming to help states coordinate and improve care for dementia patients and their caregivers.

Alzheimer’s is a devastating diagnosis. But for the first time since the condition’s initial description in 1906, scientists and clinicians are providing both dementia patients and their family members with glimmers of hope.

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Luisa Jung

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Stephen Colbert gave a full-throated defense of suspended late-night show colleague Jimmy Kimmel on Thursday night and called President Donald Trump an “autocrat.”

“I’m your host, Steven Colbert, but tonight, we are all Jimmy Kimmel,” Colbert said in a fiery opening monologue for his CBS show.

“I’m your host, Steven Colbert, but tonight, we are all Jimmy Kimmel,” Colbert said in a fiery opening monologue for his CBS show.

Colbert called ABC’s suspension of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” a day earlier under pressure from Trump’s Federal Communications Commission chairman, “blatant censorship.”

The Disney subsidiary yanked Kimmel’s show indefinitely after outrage over his recent on-air comments linking the alleged killer of conservative activist Charlie Kirk to Trump’s MAGA movement.

“With an autocrat, you cannot give an inch,” Colbert told his audience at “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” in the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York on Thursday.

“Jimmy, I stand with you and your staff 100%” said Colbert, who also has been criticized by the president.

“Jimmy, I stand with you and your staff 100%” said Colbert, who also has been criticized by the president.

Colbert dedicated Thursday’s show to free speech and to Kimmel’s team.

Trump has praised Kimmel’s suspension and suggested Thursday that the FCC might revoke the licenses of broadcast TV networks that are “against” him.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr on Wednesday hinted that ABC’s license was at stake if it did not take action against Kimmel.

Colbert on Thursday said that Carr’s “comments sure seem like marching orders.”

His episode featured a segment of “The Colbert Report,” in which the host satirically portrays a conservative pundit, and interviews with CNN anchor Jake Tapper and The New Yorker Editor David Remnick.

Remnick discussed his time as a correspondent in Moscow during the final years of the Soviet Union and the early years of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s tenure.

Remnick said that one of the first things that Putin did to consolidate control of Russia was to crack down on comedians.

Colbert looked physically exhausted at the end of the taping.

CBS in July announced it would cancel Colbert’s show, effective next May.

The announcement came soon after Colbert blasted CBS for giving what he called “a big fat bribe” to Trump. That referred to the network’s parent company, Paramount, agreeing to pay $16 million for Trump’s future library to settle a lawsuit by him over the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, who was running against him in the 2024 presidential election.

A week after the cancellation was announced, the FCC approved an $8 billion merger between Paramount and Skydance Media.

Colbert noted Thursday night that ABC suspended Kimmel hours after Nexstar Media Group said that its stations affiliated with ABC would preempt the show “for the foreseeable future” because of Kimmel’s statements about Trump.

Nexstar needs the FCC’s approval for its planned $6.2 billion merger with Tegna

People in Colbert’s audience praised his defiant stance after the taping of the show.

John Carter, a 61-year-old New Jersey resident, told CNBC, “He really said no matter what you do, we’re not going to let you get away with this madness.”

Another Garden State resident in the audience, Camille Carter, said, “I would be surprised if he makes it to the end of his contract in May.”

“Steven is putting himself out there on our behalf and raising the alarm,” said Solyasela Escudlo, a 45-year-old from the Bronx. “It takes a lot of courage to do what he did tonight, and it was simply stating facts that democracy depends on free speech.”

Corey Dickinson, 63, said, “Our country is under great threat of freedom of speech. This is a turning point in America, and a very scary time.”

“However, my wife and I both said to ourselves after watching this episode that we both felt like we were watching history in the making, and this might very well be Stephen Colbert’s last show on CBS,” said Dickinson, who lives in Palm Springs, California.

Jimmy Fallon, the host of NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” reportedly opened the taping of that show Thursday with jokes about Kimmel’s suspension, before becoming serious.

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Mr. Stewart’s program opened with a public address announcer introducing “the all-new, government-approved ‘Daily Show’” with its “patriotically obedient host,” Mr. Stewart.

The criticism from some of Mr. Kimmel’s contemporaries capped a day when an industry veteran, David Letterman, issued some of his own.

“You can’t go around firing somebody because you’re fearful or trying to suck up to an authoritarian, a criminal administration in the Oval Office,” Mr. Letterman said at The Atlantic Festival on Thursday afternoon in Lower Manhattan. “That’s just not how this works.”

ABC announced on Wednesday evening that it was pulling Mr. Kimmel’s late-night show “indefinitely” after the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, criticized remarks Mr. Kimmel had made on the show about the assassination of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Mr. Carr suggested that his regulatory agency might take action against ABC affiliates. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the F.C.C. ahead,” he said.

Mr. Carr joined a chorus of conservatives who had accused Mr. Kimmel of misrepresenting the political beliefs of Tyler Robinson, the man accused in Mr. Kirk’s assassination, during his show on Monday. On the program, Mr. Kimmel had accused Mr. Trump’s supporters of “desperately trying” to paint Mr. Robinson “as anything other than one of them.” Utah officials have said that Mr. Robinson had recently appeared to shift leftward in his views.

The indefinite suspension of the show drew the ire of liberals, who have accused the network of censorship and of bowing to political pressure from the Trump administration.

Mr. Colbert, Mr. Stewart, Mr. Letterman — and to a lesser extent, Jimmy Fallon — joined the critics on Thursday.

Mr. Fallon said on “The Tonight Show,” “I don’t know what’s going on. And no one does. But I do know Jimmy Kimmel, and he’s a decent, funny, and loving gu,y and I hope he comes back.” He then insisted that he would not be censored, before a voiceover provided more complimentary language over Mr. Fallon’s commentary.

Mr. Colbert mocked Mr. Carr’s statement about the need to push back on programming that falls short of “community values.”

“Well, you know what my community values are, buster?” Mr. Colbert said. “Freedom of speech.”

At one point, Mr. Colbert dusted off the famous “Stephen Colbert” character — a self-obsessed conservative political commentator — he played during the 10-season run of his Comedy Central program, “The Colbert Report.”

n the first act of his show, Mr. Stewart took on the role of a humble, pro-government sycophant on the edge of a nervous breakdown. The act went beyond Mr. Kimmel.

“Some naysayers may argue that this administration’s speech concerns are merely a cynical ploy, a thin gruel of a ruse, a smokescreen to obscure an unprecedented consolidation of power and unitary intimidation,” Mr. Stewart said.

“Some people would say that,” he reiterated, before a dramatic pause. “Not me, though. I think it’s great.”

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Stephen Colbert dedicated his entire “Late Show” episode to the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s show.Credit…Scott Kowalchyk/CBS Broadcasting

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Alzheimer’s disease has proved to be a tricky target, and researchers and drug developers have been pursuing effective treatments for decades. Debates rage over the disorder’s underlying causes, and various approaches have faced one hurdle after another. But the field has reached a turning point. Over the past four years, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved several therapies that address some of the condition’s potential biological roots rather than merely mitigating symptoms—a key scientific milestone. Despite the advances, however, there is still a long list of open questions and so much work to be done.

The brains of people who die with Alzheimer’s show a distinct biology: clumps or “plaques” of amyloid beta proteins in spaces between neurons and tangles of tau proteins that accumulate primarily within the nerve cells. One prevailing theory holds that amyloid builds up early, and tau tangles develop when nerve cell damage is underway, but cognitive symptoms are not yet apparent. Over time these pathogenic, or disease-causing, proteins disrupt nerve cell communication. The newest treatments—lecanemab and donanemab—bind to amyloid beta proteins, clear them from the brain, and modestly slow cognitive decline.

But the progression from disease-linked proteins to actual dementia is long and inexact, and amyloid and tau proteins accumulate in people with other neurodegenerative disorders, too. With Alzheimer’s, there is often a 20- to 30-year lag between the initial detection of amyloid and obvious cognitive decline. According to one study that predicted disease risk based on demographic data, death rates, and amyloid status, fewer than one quarter of cognitively healthy 75-year-old women who test positive for amyloid in a spinal fluid analysis or positron-emission tomography (PET) brain scan will develop Alzheimer’s dementia during their lifetime. Such findings suggest that amyloid alone is not driving disease progression and have spurred scientists to investigate other strategies.

DNA-sequencing analyses have identified gene variants that influence Alzheimer’s risk. Some of these genes point to a critical role of immune activity and inflammation in the disease process. Other research indicates that one way to reduce disease risk is through lifestyle changes. According to a 2024 report, nearly half of dementia cases worldwide could be prevented or delayed by actions addressing 14 modifiable risk factors, including hearing loss, physical inactivity, and vascular risk factors such as diabetes and smoking (many of which also impact immune activity and inflammation).

The Basics

A well-known hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease is the buildup of tau (a) and amyloid beta (b) proteins in the brain. Over time, plaques and tangles cause neuron damage (c) and cell death. But most Alzheimer’s patients have accumulated other proteins, too, such as alpha-synuclein, as well as blood vessel damage that can appear before amyloid plaques. Recent evidence suggests that inflammation, immune processes, and vascular risk factors also play a key role in the disease.

Treatment Targets

There are more than 100 ongoing clinical trials testing a variety of interventions, each of which targets one or more potential contributors to dementia. “We will get there in stages,” says Sudha Seshadri, a neurologist and founding director of the Glenn Biggs Institute for Alzheimer’s and Neurodegenerative Diseases at UT Health San Antonio in Texas. “The amyloid-lowering treatments are a piece of it. Immune-modulating drugs are probably going to be a piece of it,” she says. It will also be important to control for vascular risk, she adds, which “is important regardless of what else is happening.”

The mechanisms listed here are considered key elements of Alzheimer’s risk:

Neurotransmitter receptors • Proteins on nerve cell surfaces that receive signals and play a critical role in memory and learning. Some drugs for Alzheimer’s block harmful activity at these receptors, and others boost activity by preventing the breakdown of neurotransmitters.

Amyloid • A protein that, when misfolded, can build up outside of nerve cells in the brain and form plaques

that disrupt neural function. Several therapies aim to dissolve these deposits.

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Now Medical Studios – Yea!

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Kimora Lee Simmons is good at many things, including modeling, business, and raising beautiful babies. Her son, Kenzo, 16, has inherited some of her gifts as he recently starred in his first modeling campaign for clothing brand Eve.

The teenage model, who is quickly following in his mom and dad, Djimon Hounsou’s footsteps, also did an interview on behalf of the clothing brand. When asked about his fashion inspiration, it’s no surprise that his supermodel mother is one.

“Some fashion influences of mine would definitely be my mom, who helps me and talks to me about those types of things,” Kenzo said of the former model, who famously walked for Chanel. “And Alton Mason, who I really look up to.”

Of course, the proud mama of five gave her son public praise for his latest achievement. Simmons, 50, shared her excitement via Instagram, sharing multiple pictures from the campaign. In several images, Kenzo is photographed wearing casual wear like sweats, shorts, and T-shirts while holding a basketball.

“So proud of my baby @kenzoklh for his first modeling campaign for @weareeve_ !!! 😍🥹 Congratulations! Mama loves you! 🏀❤️,” she wrote.

In May, Kenzo turned 16, and he’s already a whopping 6’7, towering over his mother and siblings. He’s using those talents to play basketball, and now, to model.

“I’m so proud of you for the young man that you’re becoming!” Simmons wrote about him back in June. “An amazing brother, son, friend, teammate, and so much more! Mama loves you sooooo much!! Keep rising to the top! I’m right by your side every step of the way! ❤️🏀💎

Simmons had Kenzo with her ex, Djimon Hounsou. The Academy Award-nominated actor also started his career as a model in Paris in the late ’80s, going on to appear in music videos for Tina Turner, Janet Jackson, and En Vogue. Simmons also has another son, Wolfe, 10, who she had with ex-husband Tim Leissner. Additionally, the Baby Phat founder is mother to daughters Aoki, 21, and Ming, 25, whom she shares with her ex-husband Russell Simmons. The TV personality’s fifth child, Gary, was welcomed by adoption when he was 10 years old.

She is set to hit TV screens again in December with her new series, Kimora Back In The Fab Lane, where we’ll get another glimpse into her life as a mom and businesswoman.

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In the 2024 election, the fact that Donald Trump’s hardcore MAGA base aggressively supported him came as no surprise. But it was independents and swing voters who ultimately got Trump past the finish line and gave him a narrow victory in a close election.

Trump won the popular vote for the first time in 2024, defeating Democratic nominee Kamala Harris by roughly 1.5 percent — and the economy, according to polls, played a key role in that victory. Although the United States enjoyed record-low unemployment during Joe Biden’s presidency, frustration over inflation worked to Trump’s advantage.

But The New York Times’ Jamelle Bouie, in his September 17 column, argues that Trump sold U.S. voters a “fantasy” that is now unravelling.

Trump, according to Bouie, told 2024 voters that “that there were no trade-offs” with the economy — and that Americans “could have their cake and eat it, too” when, “in reality,” it “was a binary choice.”

“The essence of President Trump’s pitch to the American people last year was simple: They could have it both ways,” Bouie explains. “They could have a powerful, revitalized economy and ‘mass deportations now.’ They could build new factories and take manufacturing jobs back from foreign competitors, as well as expel every person who, in their view, didn’t belong in the United States. They could live in a ‘golden age’ of plenty — and seal it away from others outside the country with a closed, hardened border.”

One “binary choice,” according to Bouie, was that “Americans could have a strong, growing economy, which requires immigration to bring in new people and fill demand for labor, or they could finance a deportation force and close the border to everyone but a small, select few.”

“Millions of Americans embraced the fantasy,” Bouie laments. “Now, about eight months into Trump’s second term, the reality of the situation is inescapable. As promised, Trump launched a campaign of mass deportation. Our cities are crawling with masked federal agents, snatching anyone who looks ‘illegal’ to them — a bit of racial profiling that has, for now, been sanctioned by the Supreme Court. The jobs, however, haven’t arrived.”

The New York Times columnist continues, “There are fewer manufacturing jobs than there were in 2024, thanks in part to the president’s tariffs and, well, his immigration policies…. To embrace nativism in a global, connected economic world is to sacrifice prosperity for the sake of exclusion, just as the main effect of racial segregation in the American South was to leave the region impoverished and underdeveloped.”

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Mark Harmon crouches low next to log number 219: a moss-covered western hemlock tree trunk, five meters long, lying dead on the ground in the lush green woods. It’s marked by a thin aluminum tag. The forest ecologist leans in close, his unruly white beard nearly brushing against the decomposing cylinder. Dark, flaky patches on the dull, reddish-brown wood closer to the ground show where fungi have infiltrated the cellulose within. Farther down the trunk, multicolored fungal conks protrude like hard shelves barely big enough for a mouse. A shiny black beetle scurries along the ground, then out of sight under the log. Harmon presses gently on 219 with three fingertips. It’s so spongy that he is reluctant to roll back a chunk of it to reveal what lies underneath. “Oh, I don’t want to destroy it,” he says slowly. “It’s all falling apart.”

Harmon, a longtime faculty member at Oregon State University, has been watching number 219, and more than 500 other logs nearby, decay for 40 years. He has trekked to this site in the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest, a watershed nestled in Oregon’s western Cascade Mountains, at least 100 times. He drives more than two hours on paved and gravel roads from his home in Corvallis, Ore., then hikes in half a mile through the undergrowth, carrying tape measures, scales, saws and a computer to chronicle the relentless changes. His goal: establish an exhaustive baseline dataset that any scientist could use to test hypotheses about tree decomposition or to compare patterns of decomposition in the Pacific Northwest with those in other regions.

Decomposition can explain how and how fast carbon, captured by plants during photosynthesis, returns to the atmosphere. That process, which plays out at dizzying scales of both space and time, influences the long-term productivity and biodiversity of a forest. Harmon’s findings could influence when, or even whether, forest planners decide to remove dead logs to improve the health of the woods. Decay shapes how wildfire spreads through a timberland, too. Snags (dead but standing trunks) and downed trees also provide habitat for animals.

Before Harmon and his colleagues launched this log-decomposition experiment, scientists studying the impact of dead wood on the environment primarily looked only at what had already rotted, without understanding the variety of long-term factors that affected the decay. But by the early 1980s Harmon and other researchers realized patterns of decomposition emerged only from detailed tracking of actual logs sustained over decades, like snapshots stitched together into a multidimensional movie. Even after 40 years, Harmon says, ecologists are unearthing new questions: How does temperature affect the activity of decomposers such as brown rot fungi on various wood species? How do changing ecosystems promote or hinder interactions among invertebrates, microbes and wood? At what rate is carbon released from downed wood? This last one is of particular importance because it affects nutrient cycling through soils and roots, as well as climate change.

Harmon is leading the way to answers, but he may never know what they are. He designed the grand project to run for at least 200 years—well beyond his lifespan and those of his immediate successors. Ecologist Jennifer Powers of the University of Minnesota says that Harmon “really thought about long-term processes that shape forests in setting up a study he knew he would never see the end of.

”Most people regard dead trees as a nuisance, a wasted resource or something to trip over. Harmon sees revelation. When he was 21, during a run in the hilly forests of central Massachusetts, he encountered a green log that seemed to glow against the dark wooded backdrop. He had a vision that he would one day run a research effort on log decay. Granted, he wasn’t entirely clearheaded at the time. “It was helped by some substances,” he admits. “But I can still see that log.” For his first major research project, Harmon compared decomposition rates of 10 species of trees killed by fires in the Smoky Mountains. Conifer species, he found, decayed more slowly than deciduous trees, and Quercus prinus, the chestnut oak, decayed the fastest, losing 11 percent of its wood density every year.

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Hmmmm… Free Speech?

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Where Things Stand

• Networks threatened: President Trump said federal regulators should revoke broadcast licenses over late-night hosts who speak negatively about him, a day after ABC pulled Jimmy Kimmel’s show “indefinitely” after pressure from the Federal Communications Commission chairman. Mr. Trump and administration officials have long championed free speech, but their actions — as well as their promises since Charlie Kirk’s killing — to guarantee it have been replaced by efforts to quash criticism. Congressional Democrats plan to introduce long-shot legislation to bolster legal protections for people targeted by the president for speaking freely.

• Child deportations: A federal judge temporarily blocked the hasty deportation of hundreds of Guatemalan children, saying the Trump administration had misleadingly presented its actions as a “reunification” effort. Judge Timothy J. Kelly, a Trump appointee, said the government relied on false pretexts that “crumbled like a house of cards.”

Vaccine panel: A federal vaccine advisory panel appeared poised to vote against recommending vaccinating children under 4 with a combination shot that protects against measles, mumps, rubella, and chickenpox. It was also expected to vote to limit the use of a hepatitis B vaccine.

Federal officers arrested 11 Democratic elected officials inside a federal building in Lower Manhattan on Thursday after the officials demanded access to cells used by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to detain migrants.

The officials, including Brad Lander, the city comptroller, and city and state lawmakers, were arrested after they showed up at 26 Federal Plaza and sought to inspect the 10th-floor holding cells, which are operated by ICE and closed to the public. The cells have drawn scrutiny following complaints of unsanitary and overcrowded conditions, leading a federal judge to order ICE to improve the conditions last month.

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President Trump and Melania Trump, the first lady, leaving London on Thursday.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

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If Pope Leo XIV had a seat on Tesla’s board, Elon Musk’s newly proposed trillion-dollar paycheck would be dead on arrival.

The 70-year-old pontiff slammed the widening income gap between the working class and the wealthy—specifically calling out the Tesla CEO as an egregious example of executive excess.

“CEOs that 60 years ago might have been making four to six times more than what the workers are receiving, the last figure I saw, it’s 600 times more than what average workers are receiving,” he told Catholic news site Crux in an interview released Sunday.

“Yesterday, the news that Elon Musk is going to be the first trillionaire in the world: What does that mean and what’s that about? If that is the only thing that has value anymore, then we’re in big trouble.”

The Pope’s critique comes as Tesla’s board has proposed a $1 trillion pay package for Musk—contingent on his ability to grow the electric vehicle company by eightfold over the next decade. Just this morning, Musk purchased $1 billion worth of Tesla stock, an indication that he’s sticking around, according to CNN.

While Pope Leo is entitled to an over $400,000 yearly salary, on par with U.S. presidents and university chancellors, his concerns reflect broader anxiety about executive compensation. Among the 100 S&P 500 corporations with the lowest median worker pay, the average CEO compensation hit $17.2 million in 2024 as compared to an average median worker pay of $35,570, according to the Institute for Policy Studies. That’s a ratio of 632 to 1.

Billionaires’ wealth is booming—but their philanthropic giving isn’t

While everyday workers continue to struggle with inflation, wage stagnation, and a tightening job market, the wealth of the ultrarich soars. Billionaire wealth increased three times faster in 2024 than it did in 2023, according to Oxfam. And over the last decade, the top 1% increased their wealth by nearly $34 trillion—enough to eliminate annual poverty 22 times over at the highest poverty line.

ust last week, Larry Ellison broke the record for the biggest one-day increase ever recorded in the history of Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index—with his net worth soaring $89 billion thanks to his tech firm Oracle’s rapid growth.

At the same time, many billionaires are behind on their pledges to give away their money through The Giving Pledge—the commitment launched in 2010 by Warren Buffett as well as Bill and Melinda French Gates, to give away at least 50% of their wealth to philanthropy during their lifetimes or in their wills.

Among the 256 signers, just nine have followed through with the pact, and even among those who donate, it’s largely given to intermediaries, according to the Institute for Policy Studies. Of an estimated $206 billion donated by the original 2010 Pledgers, roughly 80%, or $164 billion, has gone into private foundations.

And while The Giving Pledge told Fortune the IPS report “paints a misleading picture of the impact and intent of Giving Pledge signatories and the spirit and intent of the Giving Pledge,” the organization admitted there remain important questions that aim to “encourage greater giving.”

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Forty years after global policymakers began grappling with the crisis posed by a gaping hole in Earth’s protective ozone layer over Antarctica, the damage is continuing to heal, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization.

Found between about nine and 19 miles above Earth’s surface, the ozone layer is a broad region of the stratosphere where the molecule, which contains three oxygen atoms, is particularly concentrated. Here, ozone plays a vital role in blocking the sun’s ultraviolet radiation—essentially acting as a planetary sunscreen of a sort.

In the 1980s, scientists realized that a massive hole was developing in the ozone layer over Antarctica every southern spring and then tied the observation back to earlier research that discovered that a group of chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were able to eat away at atmospheric ozone. Nations came together to develop an agreement called the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer, adopted in 1987, to stop the production of these chemicals.

“The Montreal Protocol is the best environmental agreement we’ve ever created,” says Durwood Zaelke, an environmental policy expert at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and founder and president of the Institute of Governance & Sustainable Development, an organization that is focused on addressing short-lived but high-powered climate pollutants. These include hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which do not harm the ozone layer and replaced many CFCs as they were phased out. The agreement has garnered global signatories, several rounds of successful amendments and the near-total elimination of the chemicals that break down ozone. “This is a hell of an agreement,” Zaelke says.

The result is an ozone layer that scientists predict will recover the health it had in 1980 over the tropics and midlatitudes by 2040, over the Arctic by 2045, and over the Antarctica by around 2066. “It takes a long time to heal stratospheric ozone,” Zaelke says.

The new 2024 report from the World Meteorological Organization proves that slow process is continuing as scientists have expected, says A. R. Ravishankara, an atmospheric chemist at Colorado State University. The report shows that, over 2024, total levels of ozone in the atmosphere were above the 2003–2022 average for most of the planet—just a strip near the equator and a small patch of the Antarctic coastline south of Africa were below that marker.

A particularly notable change came over Antarctica, where ozone depletion was notably lower than those from the years between 2020 and 2023. The 2024 ozone hole also formed relatively slowly and recovered relatively quickly—a good sign for the future of the ozone layer, according to the report.

Ravishankara notes that on the long road to recovery, scientists expect to see some better years and some worse years. “One year does not make a trend,” he says. Ravishankara adds that the new report and other observations of ozone in the atmosphere do show slow but steady ozone replenishment.

Ozone is produced primarily at latitudes nearer the equator. And from there, it must disperse out toward the poles, where production is much slower because of reduced sunlight, Ravishankara says. The production and transportation of ozone can be influenced by larger happenings in atmospheric phenomena, including the natural climate phenomenon called El Niño, the sun’s level of activity, the large-scale movement of the atmosphere, and of course, climate change.

An additional complication is that ozone in the lowest part of the atmosphere, called the troposphere, still blocks sunlight but also acts as a pollutant that is harmful to human health. “You need to know not only the total amount of ozone above your head but also where it is and how it is changing in different parts of the atmosphere,” Ravishankara says.

That’s why different forms of monitoring—both by satellites and from the ground—are so vital to understanding the status of the ozone layer. “This is what I call the accountability phase of the Montreal Protocol, where you want to make sure the results you want are being achieved,” Ravishankara says. “It is going to get better unless we screw up something else.”

Zaelke worries that the Montreal Protocol, like international agreements generally, won’t fare well under President Donald Trump—even though, at the request of industry groups, he signed U.S. legislation that joined the nation to the latest amendment of the protocol, Zaelke says. Still, he thinks that the global infrastructure dedicated to ozone recovery should be sufficient to withstand the administration’s tendency away from global partnerships. “While the world will miss the U.S. leadership,” Zaelke says, “it will survive.”

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