This year’s Antarctic ozone hole is 5th biggest

This year’s Antarctic ozone hole is 5th biggest

9 11 2008

September 12th, 2008 Ozone hole over the Antarctic

From NASA News

This is considered a “moderately large” ozone hole, according to NASA atmospheric scientist, Paul Newman. And while this year’s ozone hole is the fifth largest on record, the amount of ozone depleting substances have decreased about 3.8% from peak levels in 2000. The largest ozone hole ever recorded occurred in 2006, at a size of 10.6 million square miles.

The Antarctic ozone hole reached its annual maximum on Sept. 12, 2008, stretching over 27 million square kilometers, or 10.5 million square miles. The area of the ozone hole is calculated as an average of the daily areas for Sept. 21-30 from observations from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA’s Aura satellite.

More here and here from NASA

What I find most interesting is this press release from last year from NASA:

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