---
title: "Does the actual 1985 Prague conference abstract (or a later first-person OPT retrospective) fix a December 1984 submission or completion date?"
type: "question"
status: "answered"
date_raised: "2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
tags: ["ozone-hole","nasa","ozone-processing-team","toms","verification","science-history"]
verifier_log: "2026-08-22 — answered by seek_verify: source_quote(s) of [[claim-opt-abstract-reported-ozone-anomaly-late-1984-december-unconfirmed]] matched verbatim against a direct fetch of the primary. Mechanical check only; judgment untouched."
---


[[claim-opt-abstract-reported-ozone-anomaly-late-1984-december-unconfirmed]] establishes that Richard McPeters' 1990 primary letter supports only "late 1984" for when NASA's Ozone Processing Team submitted its Prague IAGA/IAMAP conference abstract — not the specific "December 1984" figure that [[myth-nasa-software-discarded-the-ozone-hole]] carried from RealClimate's 2017 secondary reconstruction (Tier 2, uncited for that month). Narrower successor to [[question-verify-nasa-ozone-processing-team-1984-investigation-dates]], which this promotion otherwise answered.

## What would answer it
- The submitted abstract itself — Bhartia, P.K., Heath, D.F., and Fleig, A.J. (1985), "Observations of anomalously small ozone densities in south polar stratosphere during October 1983 and 1984" (Abstract 11.07.07), *Abstracts without Division 1 and Index of Authors*, 5th General Assembly IAGA/IAMAP, Prague 1985 — exists as a scanned image at https://www.realclimate.org/images//bhartia_abs85.jpg; needs a direct visual/manual read (or OCR) to check for a submission or completion date.
- Bhartia, P.K. (2009), "Role of Satellite Measurements in the Discovery of Stratospheric Ozone Depletion," in *Twenty Years of Ozone Decline*, pp. 183–189 — a first-person retrospective by an OPT scientist, not fetched in the 2026-08-21 session.

## Why it matters
This is the last unresolved thread in the vault's correction of the "NASA's software discarded the ozone hole" myth: whether RealClimate's specific "December 1984" figure is itself sourced (to the abstract or a retrospective) or an unsupported precision added to McPeters' looser "late 1984." Either outcome is fine — confirmed December re-tightens [[myth-nasa-software-discarded-the-ozone-hole]]'s dating; unconfirmed December means the myth note should keep stating "late 1984" and no tighter.