NASA announced on October 26 that the ozone hole over the South Pole has shrunk by 700,000 square miles or about the size of Texas compared to this time in 2021. The results provide hope to scientists who believe that the elimination of harmful chemicals that can deplete the ozone layer has decreased the hole.
Satellite observations determine that the ozone hole area reached a single-day maximum of 10.2 million square miles on October 5 but is now back to a consistent depletion trend observed over the past few years.
Ozone Hole Consistently Decreasing
The ozone layer is the portion of the stratosphere that protects Earth from the harmful ultraviolet rays from the Sun. Ozone-depleting chemicals, such as active forms of chlorine and bromine from human-made compounds, attach to the high-altitude polar clouds each southern winter that thins out the ozone layer to form an ozone hole above the South Pole.
MailOnline reports that scientists observed that the annual Antarctic ozone hole reached an average area of 8.9 million square miles between September 7 and October 23, which is slightly smaller than last year and generally continues to shrink in recent years.
Paul Newman, chief scientist for Earth sciences at the Goddard Space Flight Center noted that steady progress has been made over the years and the hole is getting smaller. Although it might waver at times due to weather changes and other factors that make the number fluctuate from day to day or week to week, it is still generally decreasing in the past decades.
NASA and NOAA researchers detect and measure the growth and breakup of the ozone hole using scientific instruments aboard the Aura, Suomi NPP, and NOAA-20 satellites.
Aside from the chlorine and bromine that thin out the ozone layer and form a hole every September at the South Pole, scientists were also concerned about the stratospheric impacts from the January 2022 eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'anapai volcano.
However, there is no direct evidence that the effects of the volcanic eruption have been detected in the Antarctic stratospheric data. On the other hand, the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption is known to have released substantial amounts of sulfur dioxide that amplified ozone depletion. Here's a link to the ozone layer over the Antarctic with NASA's ozone watch.
Banning of Ozone-Depleting Chemicals in Aerosols
Scientists believe that the elimination of ozone-depleting chemicals in aerosols through the Montreal Protocol is the cause of why the ozone hole is shrinking.
According to Wonderful Engineering's report, the treaty was brought forward after scientists noticed a giant hole appeared in the ozone layer in the early 1980s. Researchers said that the Montreal Protocol prevented Earth to be scorched by the harmful UV rays from the Sun.
They found that banning the chemicals protected the climate in two ways: the practice restricted the spread of the greenhouse effect, and it kept plants from being damaged due to increases in UV radiation.
They noted that Earth would have experienced a global collapse in the ozone layer by the 2040s and have less than 60% of ozone above the tropics by the end of the century if it were not for the treaty.
That means that the most affected areas include most parts of Europe, the US, Central Asia, and New Zealand, and will be stronger than the present-day tropics by 2050. A smaller ozone layer will expose more plants and vegetation to far more of the Sun's UV rays.
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