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Atmospheric science

An Arctic ozone hole?

Nature volume 478, pages 462–463 (2011)Cite this article

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The observation of unusually low ozone levels over the Arctic last winter provides reassuring evidence that our knowledge of stratospheric chemistry is robust. Whether such an episode will happen again is an open question. See Article p.469

In late March of this year, the thickness of the ozone column in the atmosphere above the Arctic dropped to minimum values of 220–230 Dobson units (DU). Although these values are much higher than the lowest values seen routinely since the 1990s for the Antarctic spring (about 100 DU), they are nonetheless among the lowest ozone-column figures ever observed in the Arctic1. These values were recorded for just one week in late March, but minimum column amounts of less than 250 DU were observed for almost a month. Reporting on page 469 of this issue, Manney et al.2 argue that the very low ozone observed over the Arctic in March constitutes the first ever 'ozone hole' in the Northern Hemisphere.

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Figure 1: Cold clouds.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Rolando R. Garcia is in the Atmospheric Chemistry Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research, PO Box 3000, Boulder, Colorado 80307-3000, USA.,

    Rolando R. Garcia

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  1. Rolando R. Garcia
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Correspondence to Rolando R. Garcia.

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Garcia, R. An Arctic ozone hole?. Nature 478, 462–463 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/478462a

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