North Pole’s largest-ever ozone hole,620,000 square miles, finally closes
- Scientists who have been observing the ozone hole at Copernicus’ Atmospheric Monitoring Service (CAMS) have announced that the hole is now closed.
- This ozone hole became the largest one ever recorded in the Arctic region spanning an area of over 620,000 square miles (or 997793.28 kms).
ABOUT THE 2020 Northern Hemisphere ozone hole
- This hole in Ozone was first identified by scientists in March 2020.
- This first opened when unusual wind conditions trapped frigid air over the North Pole for several weeks in a row.
- Those winds, known as a polar vortex, created a circular cage of cold air that led to the formation of high-altitude clouds in the region.
- The clouds mixed with man-made pollutants like chlorine and bromine, eating away at the surrounding ozone gas until a massive hole roughly three times the size of Greenland opened in the atmosphere.
- The last time such a strong chemical ozone depletion was observed in the Arctic occurred nearly a decade ago, in 2011.
- However, the polar vortex “split” creating a pathway for ozone-rich air to rush back into the area above the North Pole.
ABOUT OZONE LAYER
- A region in Earth’s stratosphere, second major layer of Earth’s atmosphere.
- Absorbs most of the Sun’s ultraviolet
- Depleted by free radical catalysts, including nitric oxide(NO), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydroxyl (OH), atomic chlorine (Cl), and atomic bromine (Br), and man-made chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and bromofluorocarbons.
ABOUT CAMS
- Service implemented by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts
- Part of the Copernicus Programme which describes the current situation, forecasts the situation a few days ahead, and analyses consistently retrospective data records for recent years.
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