Oct 4, 2023 at 10:09 PM Update: 2 hours ago
The hole in the ozone layer above the South Pole has almost never been as big as it is now. With a size of 26 million square kilometers, it is almost three times the size of Brazil, the European Space Agency said on Wednesday.
It is normal for the hole to get bigger or smaller at times, but now it is noticeably large.
Some researchers think it is due to the eruption of an undersea volcano in Tonga early last year. This released a lot of water vapor into the air. This may have caused more ozone to break down than normal.
But ESA researchers don’t know for sure yet. This is an ongoing investigation.
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What is ozone?
Ozone is a gas in the atmosphere that protects us from harmful radiation from the sun. The concentrations of ozone at the poles fluctuate throughout the year. We speak of a hole in the ozone layer when the amount of ozone falls below a certain level.
The level is lowest in September and October every year. As temperatures rise high above the Southern Hemisphere, ozone depletion slows and the ozone layer thickens again. The level often returns to normal in December.
The strength of the wind blowing around Antarctica also affects the size of the hole in the ozone layer. The wind can form a kind of barrier, which means that less warm (or cold) wind from other regions can enter.
The hole in the ozone layer was extra large in the 1970s and 1980s. This was due to harmful substances that were found in refrigerators, among other things. That is why those substances were banned in 1987.
The ozone layer has still not fully recovered. Scientists expect that the ozone layer will need until 2050 to fully return to pre-1975 levels.
Beeld: European Space Agency (ESA)
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ScienceClimate
2023-10-04 20:09:17
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