On Sept. 20, the Antarctic ozone hole peaked at 10.6 million square miles (27.4 million square kilometers), the second-largest size ever observed for this time of the year.
The last time the ozone hole was this big was in October 2015, when it reached a whopping 10.8 million square miles (27.9 million square km), records from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service show. So why is the hole in the ozone layer — the shield that protects life on Earth from harmful ultraviolet solar radiation — so big this year, despite other clues telling scientists that it is recovering as expected from the damage human-made chemicals did in the 20th century?
The ozone hole’s extent is due to extremely low temperatures in the stratosphere, but it’s also possible that we could be seeing a new long-term trend of large, persistent holes, experts told Live Science.
“This year’s ozone hole shouldn’t be a cause for alarm,” Hannah Kessenich, a postdoctoral physicist at the University of Otago in New Zealand who predicted the 2026 ozone hole’s extent using satellite data and a computer model, told Live Science in an email. “However, there are still many unanswered questions. It’s something we need to keep a close eye on.”
Accurate predictions
The latest figures from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service indicate that the size of Antarctica’s ozone hole has dropped to around 9.3 million square miles (24 million square km) since Sept. 20, making it unlikely that this year will break the 2015 record. However, scientists think the hole will remain large and fluctuate over the next few weeks, Kessenich said.
Antarctica’s 2026 ozone hole peaked Sept. 20 and has been shrinking since.
(Image credit: Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service)
Antarctica’s ozone hole expands every year during the Southern Hemisphere’s winter and spring. It typically reaches its maximum size between mid-September and early October, when temperatures are still freezing in the stratosphere and sunlight illuminates the frozen continent for the first time after months of darkness. The hole then shrinks again until late January as surrounding ozone-rich air mixes into the depleted region.
Antarctica’s ozone hole was caused by emissions of ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) between the 1930s and late 1980s. These chemicals increased concentrations of chlorine in the stratosphere, thereby promoting a reaction that depletes the ozone layer. While countries signed the Montreal Protocol to phase out CFC use beginning in 1989, major CFCs have atmospheric lifetimes of 50 to 100 years, so the hole’s recovery could take six decades, researchers estimate.
The ozone layer is particularly vulnerable above Antarctica due to the frigid conditions in the polar stratosphere. Temperatures below minus 108 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 78 degrees Celsius) trigger the formation of high-altitude clouds, whose icy surfaces turn inactive chlorine into its ozone-destroying form in the presence of sunlight. These conditions don’t exist to the same extent in the Arctic, because warmer air from the midlatitudes mixes more readily with cold Arctic air than with Antarctic air, thereby blocking the formation of high-altitude clouds.
Changes in the polar vortex
This year’s large ozone hole is caused by a very strong polar vortex, a wall of wind that encircles Antarctica and the Southern Ocean in the winter, trapping cold air above the continent. The polar vortex created colder-than-usual conditions in the stratosphere over Antarctica, accelerating the growth of the ozone hole.
We have to look at the longer term trends, and those metrics continue to tell us that the ozone hole is slowly recovering as expected.
Susan Solomon, professor of chemistry and environmental studies at MIT
Researchers haven’t detected an increase in reactive chlorine, but the colder polar vortex has triggered more ozone depletion than usual, said Susan Solomon, a professor of chemistry and environmental studies at MIT who pioneered the study of Antarctica’s ozone hole in the 1980s.
This size of this year’s ozone hole is most likely a product of natural variability in atmospheric dynamics, Kessenich said.
“We expect ups and downs in the size of the hole from year to year,” Solomon told Live Science in an email. “A year or a few years of bigger or smaller holes doesn’t tell us anything about ozone loss or recovery; it is just variability. We have to look at the longer term trends, and those metrics continue to tell us that the ozone hole is slowly recovering as expected.”
It’s also reassuring that the ozone hole, while large, isn’t as “thin” as in years past. The hole’s extent is calculated based on the area above the continent with ozone values below 220 Dobson units, a measure of how many ozone molecules occur in a vertical column through Earth’s atmosphere. Although the area of this year’s ozone hole is huge, ozone values haven’t dropped as low as in previous big-ozone-hole years, suggesting that there is less ozone “missing” from the hole compared with those years, Kessenich and her colleagues wrote in The Conversation.
But there’s also the possibility that we’ve shifted to a new long-term trend of big ozone holes persisting until late spring, Kessenich said. Changes in global atmospheric dynamics unrelated to CFCs could be making longer-lived holes more likely, she and her colleagues wrote in the article.
There is also some evidence that climate change will strengthen the Antarctic polar vortex over time, which could lead to colder temperatures in the stratosphere and greater ozone losses in the spring, Kessenich said. If this year’s polar vortex stays robust, the ozone hole could remain large well into November, she noted.
“It’s too soon to tell what has been driving dynamical variability in recent years, but more research is needed,” she added.
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