OPT's primary record confirms it reported the ozone anomaly in "late 1984," but does not itself specify December

ozone-holenasaozone-processing-teamtomsmcpetersprimary-source-verificationscience-historyunverified-quant

Richard McPeters' 1990 letter (see claim-mcpeters-1990-letter-dates-opt-investigation-to-july-1984 for full provenance) states that NASA's Ozone Processing Team submitted a conference abstract reporting the anomalous low-ozone readings "in late 1984," for the IAGA/IAMAP meeting in Prague, Czechoslovakia (held August 1985) — months before Joe Farman's team published in Nature (May 1985). This confirms the general shape of myth-nasa-software-discarded-the-ozone-hole's claim that OPT was privately confident in its data well before the ground-based paper appeared.

At the specific month level, though, the primary source supports only "late 1984." myth-nasa-software-discarded-the-ozone-hole currently states "December 1984," a figure sourced to RealClimate's 2017 reconstruction (Tier 2), which does not itself cite a source for that month. The McPeters letter, the strongest primary evidence available on this point, does not corroborate it.

[unverified-quant — needs primary] December's precision most plausibly derives from the submitted abstract itself — Bhartia, Heath & Fleig (1985), "Observations of anomalously small ozone densities in south polar stratosphere during October 1983 and 1984," Abstract 11.07.07 — which exists only as a scanned image (not machine-readable this session) and was not independently read. Routed: question-verify-opt-1985-prague-abstract-december-1984-date.