While back in 2019 we heard news of this hole having gotten much smaller, throughout 2020 things have not been as positive in any way. It seems this hole is expanding and has gotten quite big.
According to The Sun, this hole has reached one of its ‘greatest and deepest recorded sizes this year.’ A video on this was released by the European Space Agency and that video went over exactly this. In this video you can see the size of this hole growing and well, it’s quite alarming. To see this video for yourself take a peek below.
The ESA wrote as follows on this topic breaking things down a bit:
The size of the ozone hole fluctuates on a regular basis. From August to October, the ozone hole increases in size – reaching a maximum between mid-September and mid-October. When temperatures high up in the stratosphere start to rise in the southern hemisphere, the ozone depletion slows, the polar vortex weakens and finally breaks down, and by the end of December ozone levels return to normal.
This year, measurements from the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite, show that this year’s ozone hole reached its maximum size of around 25 million sq km on 2 October, comparable to the sizes of 2018 and 2015 (where the area was around 22.9 and 25.6 sq in the same period). Last year, the ozone hole not only closed earlier than usual, but was also the smallest hole recorded in the last 30 years.
The variability of the size of the ozone hole is largely determined by the strength of a strong wind band that flows around the Antarctic area. This strong wind band is a direct consequence of Earth’s rotation and the strong temperature differences between polar and moderate latitudes.
If the band of wind is strong, it acts like a barrier: air masses between polar and temperate latitudes can no longer be exchanged. The air masses then remain isolated over the polar latitudes and cool down during the winter.
Diego Loyola, from the German Aerospace Center, comments, “Our observations show that the 2020 ozone hole has grown rapidly since mid-August, and covers most of the Antarctic continent – with its size well above average. What is also interesting to see is that the 2020 ozone hole is also one of the deepest and shows record-low ozone values. The total ozone column measurements from the Tropomi instrument on Sentinel-5P reached close to 100 Dobson Units on 2 October.”
ESA’s mission manager for Copernicus Sentinel-5P, Claus Zehner, adds, “The Sentinel-5P total ozone columns provide an accurate means to monitor ozone hole occurrences from space. Ozone hole phenomena cannot be used in straightforward manner for monitoring global ozone changes as they are determined by the strength of regional strong wind fields that flow around polar areas.”
This really highlights that what we saw back in 2019 was not a sign that things were finally better seemingly overnight. Things are overall very much still in need of recovery. While we might be trying hard to save the ozone layer, that in itself will not be an easy feat.