Depth and Size of Antarctic Ozone Hole

  depth ozone hole   size ozone hole
The depth (above) and size (top-right) of the Antarctic ozone hole, and the ozone loss (right) at 12h GMT of each day as extracted from the GOME Assimilated Ozone Fields, available at the Fast Delivery Service since 1 November 1999.

Definitions used for these graphs:

  • The depth of the ozone hole is the lowest ozone column value in Dobson Units (DU) for latitudes below 30° South.
  • The size of the ozone hole is the area on the globe in million square km of ozone column values below 200 DU.
  • The ozone loss is the amount of ozone in megaton necessary to fill the ozone hole to 200 DU over the whole area.
  • Dividing the ozone loss by the ozone hole area gives an average ozone loss in ton per square km.
Note that the Antarctic continent is about 14 million km², the USA is just over 9 million km², Italy is about 0.3 million km², and The Netherlands only 0.04 million km².
(Graphs similar to the top two are also derived from TOMS data.) 		  ozone loss
  ozone loss per unit area

 

 

Largest depth and size of the Antarctic ozone hole
extrema are printed in bold

  date in 2000 * minimum ozone
  value [DU] 		south pole ozone
  value [DU] 		ozone hole area
  [million km²] 		ozone loss
  [megaton]
16 September 109 (±   6) 128 (± 11) 26.10 30.98
29 September 85 (±   8) 91 (± 10) 25.14 35.88

  date in 2001 * minimum ozone
  value [DU] 		south pole ozone
  value [DU] 		ozone hole area
  [million km²] 		ozone loss
  [megaton]
16 September 109 (±   7) 136 (± 16) 25.36 25.66
26 September 91 (± 10) 93 (± 11) 24.05 31.23
27 September 89 (±   8) 92 (± 12) 24.42 30.33
28 September 88 (±   7) 95 (± 12) 23.46 28.05

  date in 2002 * minimum ozone
  value [DU] 		south pole ozone
  value [DU] 		ozone hole area
  [million km²] 		ozone loss
  [megaton]
19 September 138 (± 15) 151 (± 14) 19.65 14.71
21 September 132 (± 13) 169 (± 11) 16.58 11.45
20 October 137 (± 11) 143 (± 11) 7.39 4.76

For the years 2000 and 2001, the ozone hole was deepest at the end of September.
Around that same day the value at the South Pole reaches a minimum and the
mass loss a maximum. The size of the ozone hole, however, reached a maximum
some two weeks earlier.
The 2002 ozone hole behaved very differently: after moving away from around
the South Pole, the ozone hole became elongated and finally broke up into two
parts around 23 September, and one of these two vanished over the next 6-7 days,
leaving an ozone hole much smaller than usual and giving very different extrema
of size and depth of the ozone hole.

*) the date links to the south pole image of that day
    ===> South pole image archive:   1999  |  2000  |  2001  |  2002

for definitions of the quantities: see above

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This page is maintained by: Jos van Geffen
Copyright © KNMI -- Last modified: 1 April 2003