Cathedral has weathered London’s acid rain
Where St. Paul’s Cathedral now stands in London, previous cathedrals had fallen to fire, Viking raiders, and war. The current structure, designed by Christopher Wren in the late 1600s, withstood direct hits by German bombers during World War II, but it’s been succumbing to a more insidious challenge—acid rain.
That environmental attack is abating, however. On Sept. 13, scientists at the annual conference of the British Geomorphological Research Group will report that St. Paul’s stony exterior now weathers only about half as fast as it did in the 1980s. The likely reason? London’s atmospheric sulfur dioxide concentrations, which contribute to acid rain, have been dropping.