- Science: They discover a large hole in the ozone layer over the Arctic
- Mario Molina. "We have corrected the ozone hole, but we have not yet solved climate change"
The largest hole in the Arctic ozone layer ever seen, which has attracted the attention of experts since last March, has already begun to close, according to the European observation network Copernicus.
The reason has been an intense heat wave in the polar region, with temperatures of up to 20ºC above the average on these dates, which has caused the polar vortex to split in two, a belt of winds over the region that this The year has been especially cold, which caused the large ozone hole observed in recent weeks.
The freezing temperatures inside the vortex generate clouds in the upper layers of the atmosphere, in which chemical compounds from industry are concentrated. The result is that the ozone layer is weakening, something that has occurred at record levels this year. But time has changed and the immense hole, which grew to three times that of Greenland, is already closing.
"It is very unusual for such strong ozone depletion to occur in the northern hemisphere, but this year's polar vortex was exceptionally strong and persistent, and temperatures were low enough to allow stratospheric cloud formation for several months," as explained by the program scientist Copernicus Antje Inness to Euronews .
"The unprecedented 2020 ozone hole in the northern hemisphere is over. The polar vortex has split, allowing ozone-rich air to penetrate the Arctic , virtually coinciding with last week's forecast from the Atmospheric Monitoring Service "The Copernicus Climate Change Service announced on its Twitter account on Thursday, before referring to the aforementioned information from Euronews for more details.
The exact causes of the icy vortex that caused the hole are still unknown. "We don't know, at the moment, why the dynamics were so unusual this winter . I'm sure many scientists will be doing modeling studies to find out the reasons," Inness said. .
Experts of the Copernicus program predict that the polar vortex, now fragmented, will strengthen again in the coming weeks, although it will no longer cause an ozone hole as large as the one observed in late March.
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