The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration measures the direct climate influence of many greenhouse gasses through the Annual Greenhouse Gas Index, also known as the AGGI, and it showed that a rise in greenhouse gasses between 2009 and 2010. Started in 2004 the AGGI does not provide exact details as to what the temperature increases
Each spring the ozone hole which hovers over Antarctica reaches its maximum, and on September 12 it stretched some 10.05 million square miles, the ninth largest stretch on record. More specifically, above the South Pole, levels of ozone dropped to the 10th lowest in its 26 year record.
Akin to the ozone loss which has been much publicized over Antarctica, the Arctic saw massive ozone losses in 2011 thanks to unusually low temperatures which lingered for a longer than normal time in the stratosphere.
The European Space Agency, the UN’S World Meteorological Organization, and the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research are among the leading authorities reporting a record depletion of the ozone layer over the Arctic.
According to the WMO, “depletion of the ozone layer … has reached an unprecedented level over the Arctic this spring because of the continuing presence of ozone-depleting substances…”
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center has produced this map and the following video representing the ozone loss over the Arctic over the beginning of 2010 and 2011. They show the concentrations of ozone over the Arctic as monitored by the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) onboard NASA’s Aura satellite.
Cooler temperatures in the ozone layer above the Arctic have recently caused a dramatic drop in ozone levels, suggesting that the region is in for a record loss of the trace gas that protects the planet’s surface from ultraviolet radiation from the sun.
