Antarctic ozone hole smaller this year, says NASA
The ozone hole over Antarctica -- the region where the Earth-shielding ozone typically gets depleted -- is smaller this year than last year, says the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA). "This Antarctic year's ozone depletion area, or ozone hole, is very large, but slightly smaller than that of 1998," said Richard McPeters, one of the scientists who used data from the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer aboard NASA's Earth Probe satellite to measure the hole. This year's southern ozone hole covered 25.38 million sq km on September 15, according to preliminary satellite data.
The largest hole in the ozone over Antarctica was 27.19 million sq km. It was recorded on September 19, 1998. Ozone shields life on Earth from the harmful effects of the sun's ultraviolet (UV) radiation. The Antarctic ozone losses are caused by chlorine and bromine compounds released by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and halons.
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