A couple of days ago, a newly-released study shocked the scientific community with news that a massive hole exists in the ozone layer above the Arctic. Now, scientists at NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) release new images of the atmospheric distortion.
This image is captured by the NASA Aura satellite, which carries the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) instrument. This tool is one of the first to have identified the issues related to the low ozone concentrations above the planet's North Pole.
The other instruments on Aura – the American space agency's third and last Earth Observing System (EOS) satellite – are the High Resolution Dynamics Limb Sounder, the Ozone Monitoring Instrument and the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer.
This satellite is especially well equipped to handle this type of atmospheric study. Experts have already used its data to determine that the substances which cause the holes in the ozone layer, called chlorofluorocarbons, have decay times of between 50 and 100 years.
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