Global Warming

Arctic Ozone Aperture

NASA satellites have just detected one of the largest holes ever observed in the ozone layer over the Arctic.

Although the holes above Antarctica are much larger and dramatic, allowing dangerous ultraviolet light to reach the surface, those over the Arctic are usually much smaller, and often called “gaps” rather than holes due to their sizes.

But experts say the hole that opened from northern Canada to Siberia in March exceeds the record sizes set in 2011 and 1997.

Meanwhile Earth’s Ozone Hole Over Antarctica Continues to Repair Itself

It has been more than 30 years since the world banned the chemicals that were depleting Earth’s protective ozone layer and simultaneously triggering some troubling changes in atmospheric circulation in the Southern Hemisphere.

Now, new research published this week in Nature finds that those changes have paused and might even be reversing because of the Montreal Protocolan international treaty that successfully phased out use of ozone-depleting chemicals.

Ozone depletion has shifted the midlatitude jet stream and the dry regions at the edge of the tropics toward the South Pole. However, there are signs that this shift in wind circulation has paused and may even be reversing to original conditions.

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