2023 ozone hole has grown rapidly since mid-August, says Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service.
LONDON
The European Space Agency (ESA) warned Wednesday about a growing ozone hole above Antarctica and said it is one of the “biggest on record.”
It noted measurements from “the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite” show that the "ozone depleting area" has reached 26 million square kilometers as of Sept. 16 -- roughly "three times the size of Brazil."
"Our operational ozone monitoring and forecasting service shows that the 2023 ozone hole got off to an early start and has grown rapidly since mid-August," said Antje Inness, a senior scientist at the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service.
The ESA said this year’s unusual ozone patterns could be associated with the eruption of the Hunga Tonga volcano in the South Pacific in January 2022.
"The eruption … injected a lot of water vapour into the stratosphere which only reached the south polar regions after the end of the 2022 ozone hole," said Inness.
The size of the ozone fluctuates from August to October, typically reaching maximum depletion between mid-September and and mid-October.
This year, the ozone hole got off to an early start and has grown "rapidly" since mid-August, "making it one of the biggest ozone holes on record," Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service senior scientist Antje Inness said in a statement.
The size of the ozone hole is largely determined by the strength of a strong wind band that flows around the Antarctic area, a result of the rotation of the Earth and the oppositional temperature differences between polar and moderate latitudes.
Ozone levels usually return to normal by mid-December, after temperatures high up in the stratosphere rise in the southern hemisphere, slowing the ozone depletion and weakening the polar vortex, according to Copernicus.
A report released by the United Nations Environment Programme in January found that the ozone layer was on track to recover within decades.
There is some speculation that the unusual behavior of the ozone layer in 2023 is a result of the Tongan underwater volcano eruption in January 2022.
The immense amount of water vapor that was injected into the atmosphere likely just started reaching the south polar region after the end of the 2022 ozone hole, Antje said.
The water vapor could have led to a heightened formation of polar stratospheric clouds, allowing chlorofluorocarbons to react and accelerate ozone depletion.
The impact of the widespread use of damaging chlorofluorocarbons in products such as refrigerators and aerosol tins in the 1970s and 1980s led to the depletion of the ozone high in the atmosphere, allowing for the ozone layer above Antarctica to open up, according to Copernicus.
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