Susan Solomon: ‘We had to literally stand out on the roof’
The atmospheric chemist on battling the elements in Antarctica and preserving the integrity of science
I found out that there was such a thing as chemistry on a planet instead of in a test tube when I was an undergraduate student. I just thought that that would be so fascinating. And I’m sure it jibed a little bit with the period – the 1970s was an era of tremendous environmental interest and activism in the United States.
It wasn’t really until the Antarctic ozone hole was discovered that my connections to policy got much stronger, partly because there was so much demand for information about what was going on. I got involved in that from both the numerical modelling and theory point of view, and also went to Antarctica and took some of the first measurements that found chlorofluorocarbons are the cause of the ozone hole. The rest, as they say, is history.
As is often said, Antarctica isn’t a place – it’s an obsession. It’s an astonishing place to visit. It’s such a remote area of the planet and there’s all the amazing history around it, which just adds to the to the tension and the intrigue. To have the ozone hole show up there was exciting to both science and to the public.