Ozone hole could be deepest on record, U.N. says
September 22, 2000
GENEVA, Switzerland (Reuters) -- The hole in the ozone layer over
Antarctica is growing at an unprecedented rate and could reach a
record depth this year, United Nations meteorologists said on
Friday.
The findings of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) come
two weeks after the U.S. space agency NASA said the largest hole
ever seen had opened up over Antarctica, a sign that greenhouse
gases are taking their toll on the earth's protective layer.
"The rapid and early development of the ozone hole... continues,
as sunlight reached the South Pole after the total darkness of
winter," the Geneva-based WMO said.
"If the losses persist as is now expected, we will have the
deepest ozone hole on record," it added.
The report of the Geneva-based WMO comes two months before
ministers gather in The Hague to discuss progress on implementing
a U.N. framework convention on climate change.
Governments are under pressure to comply with pledges made in
Kyoto in 1997 to curb emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon
dioxide that are blamed for global warming and other extreme
weather patterns.
Meteorological conditions in the stratosphere will significantly
affect the size of the hole, its depth and persistence, according
to the WMO.
"It is as strong as we've ever seen one," Dr. Michael Proffitt,
the agency's senior scientific officer, told Reuters.
"I've been looking at all previous history of the ozone hole and
we've never seen one any more intense at its peak. Historically,
we would expect two or three more weeks of intensive ozone loss,"
he added.
For more than a decade, the annual hole in the earth's protective
layer has appeared in late August or early September, with the
phenomenon peaking in the first week or two of October.
During the past two weeks, all 12 monitoring stations around the
rim of the Antarctic have reported measurements of ozone that are
50-70 percent below the norms in the years 1964-1976, before the
ozone hole was detected, the WMO said.
"For some of the stations, these represent the lowest measured
values in their records," it said.
Since last Monday, the edge of the hole has been over the
Argentinean town of Usual, the WMO said.
An image released by the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) on September 8 showed a hole appearing as a
giant blue blob, totally covering Antarctica and stretching to
the southern tip of South America.
NASA said at the time that the hole spread over 11 million square
miles (28.3 million square km), an area three times larger than
the land mass of the United States.
SOURCE: CNN
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