The Antarctic ozone hole develops during the Austral winter and reaches its deepest levels by early spring (late September to early October). The severity of the hole has been assessed from satellites by calculating the average aerial coverage of depletion during the September—October period. Profile information shows that ozone is completely destroyed in the 14–21 km layer by early October. This ozone is mainly destroyed by halogen (chlorine and bromine) catalytic cycles, and these losses are modulated by temperature variations.
Because atmospheric halogen levels are responding to international agreements that limit or phase out production, the amount of halogens in the stratosphere should considerably decrease over the next few decades. Using projections of halogen levels combined with age-of-air estimates, we find that the ozone hole is recovering at an extremely slow rate and that large ozone holes will regularly recur over the next 2 decades. We estimate that the ozone hole will begin to show first signs of area decrease in about 2023, and the hole will fully recover to pre-1980 levels in approximately 2070. Estimates of the ozone hole's recovery from models reveal important uncertainties in recovery as a result of climate change.
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Newman, P.A., Nash, E.R., Douglass, A.R., Nielsen, J.E., Stolarski, R.S. (2009). Estimating When the Antarctic Ozone Hole will Recover. In: Zerefos, C., Contopoulos, G., Skalkeas, G. (eds) Twenty Years of Ozone Decline. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2469-5_14
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