Smoke from Australia’s intense fires in 2019 and 2020 damaged the ozone layer
Increasingly large blazes threaten to undo decades of work to help Earth’s protective layer
![photo of a police car in the foreground with cloud of smoke billowing above Yanderra township buildings](https://i0.wp.com/www.sciencenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/031622_cg_australiafire_feat.jpg?fit=1030%2C580&ssl=1)
A towering cloud of smoke rises over the Green Wattle Creek bushfire on December 21, 2019, near the township of Yanderra in New South Wales, Australia.
Helitak430/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)