Antarctic Ozone Hole

https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/2014-antarctic-ozone-hole-holds-steady/

Date: October 30, 2014


Source: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center


My Summary:

In Antarctica the Ozone hole has reached its maximum expected size for this year. This hole was recorded on September 11th 2014 and was almost the size of North America. This may seem big but it is smaller than the years from 1998 to 2006. The largest ozone hole was recorded on September 9th 2000 when the hole was 29.9 million square kilometres. This year’s hole was 24.1 square kilometres. Despite this good news scientists also discovered the minimum thickness of the ozone layer was recorded at 114 Dobson units or just over 1 mm thick. In the 1960s the minimum thickness of the ozone layer was between 250 and 350 Dobson units. All of this data was gathered by Dutch-Finnish Ozone Monitoring Instruments on NASA’s Aura Satellite.


Discussion:
The ozone hole is a very important key to healthy life on earth as without it we would be harmed by the sun's powerful UV rays. These rays can give us skin cancer and kill plants. The Ozone layer of the atmosphere can regenerate on its own so to help with this problem I can try to use less electricity and make people aware about the problem. Another solution is to use green energy. Our government has already started to take steps towards green energy and continues to pass laws and bills that control how much energy people use. It will take many years to convert our country and maybe even world over to clean pollution free electricity. Once we do have green energy the Ozone hole problem will become a thing of the past.