Ozone Layer Above Arctic Shrinking to Record Lows

The thinning of the ozone layer above the North Pole – which researchers began monitoring a few years back – is currently about to establish a new record. According to scientists, the layer has diminished significantly from its normal levels, and the trend appears to continue unabated.

Generally, the thinning process is annual. It begins in the spring and last for a few months, after which the ozone layers replenish, and things revert to normal. But this year things got a bit out of hand, in the sense that as much as half of the layer was gone.

Ozone is a critically-important chemical in Earth's atmosphere, whose job is to form a protective layer above the planetary surface. This barrier prevents harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation emanating from the Sun from reaching living things.

UV light has the potential to cause DNA mutations, and overexposure to it has been correlated to the development of skin cancer and other conditions in humans. The ozone layer is the only thing that stands between these radiation and us.

In fact, evolutionary biologists and planetary scientists argue that the development of life on Earth would have not had the same course had it not been for the ozone layer to shield early lifeforms.

With the hole in the ozone layer above the Antarctic recovering – following the introduction of protective measures in the Montreal Protocol – scientists used to believe we've dodged a bullet.

However, it would appear that this is not the case. Over the past 6 weeks, European scientists measured a 50 percent depletion of the ozone layer covering the Arctic. These information “are kind of a warning that we might be getting into an ozone hole situation,” explains Francis Schmidlin.

The expert, who is not a part of the European polar-ozone monitoring group, holds an appointment at the Virginia-based NASA Wallops Flight Facility, Science News reports.

According to the latest data, the ozone depletion area above the North Pole covers more than 15 million square kilometers, which is an area about 22 times larger than the state of Texas. The thing about this area is that it's not fixed.

On instances, experts tracked it moving as far south as Italy, where it stayed for a few days, before returning above the Arctic. The depletion area can also travel above Canada and the United States.

Therefore, people living in these areas may be briefly exposed to higher-than-normal amounts of UV radiation, which could contribute to a rise in the incidence of skin cancer cases over the coming years.

The team that conducted the new research was led by atmospheric scientist Markus Rex, who is based at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Potsdam, Germany.