What Ozone Crisis? NASA, NOAA Rank 2024 Ozone Hole as 7th-Smallest Since Recovery Began
13 hours ago Anthony Watts 52 Comments
By James R. Riordon – NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Healing continues in the atmosphere over the Antarctic: a hole that opens annually in the ozone layer over Earth’s southern pole was relatively small in 2024 compared to other years. Scientists with NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) project the ozone layer could fully recover by 2066.
Map shows orange and red colors spanning most of Antarctica and part of the Southern Ocean, indicating areas of low ozone concentrations.
This map shows the size and shape of the ozone hole over the South Pole on Sept. 28, 2024, the day of its annual maximum extent, as calculated by the NASA Ozone Watch team. Scientists describe the ozone “hole” as the area in which ozone concentrations drop below the historical threshold of 220 Dobson units.
NASA Earth Observatory/Lauren Dauphin
During the peak of ozone depletion season from Sept. 7 through Oct. 13, the 2024 area of the ozone hole ranked the seventh smallest since recovery began in 1992, when the Montreal Protocol, a landmark international agreement to phase out ozone-depleting chemicals, began to take effect.
At almost 8 million square miles (20 million square kilometers), the monthly average ozone-depleted region in the Antarctic this year was nearly three times the size of the contiguous U.S. The hole reached its greatest one-day extent for the year on Sept. 28 at 8.5 million square miles (22.4 million square kilometers).
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/11/02/what-ozone-crisis-nasa-noaa-rank-2024-ozone-hole-as-7th-smallest-since-recovery-began/
