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posted by takyon on Monday November 06 2017, @08:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the EUV-from-above dept.

NASA: Ozone hole smallest it's been since 1988

NASA and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have been monitoring the ozone hole since it was first discovered in 1985. The agencies use satellites, weather balloons and ground-based instruments to study and track the hole. The ozone hole changes throughout the year and reached its 2017 peak size on Sept. 11 at the end of the region's wintertime.

Scientists weren't surprised by the size of the hole this year. "This is what we would expect to see given the weather conditions in the Antarctic stratosphere," says Paul A. Newman, a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. NASA cites warmer global temperatures as a factor in reducing the hole.

But don't get too excited. NASA says the smaller hole "is due to natural variability and not a signal of rapid healing." The ozone hole still covered 7.6 million square miles (nearly 20 million square kilometers), or over two and a half times the size of Australia. Still, scientists are optimistic about the ozone hole eventually healing over time.


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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 07 2017, @06:02AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 07 2017, @06:02AM (#593513) Journal

    Or maybe it's just science getting it right like it usually does.

    Only if science delivers the right answers. We still don't know, for example, if the ozone hole is something that showed up for the first time in the 1980s or if it's been going off and on for the past five million years. But the current narrative makes a cool story, bro.