The Buzz | South Pole’s ozone hole shrinks to smallest since discovery

The ozone hole near the south pole this year is the smallest since it was discovered, but it is more due to freakish Antarctic weather than efforts to cut down on pollution, NASA reported .
This fall, the average hole in Earth’s protective ozone layer is 9.3 million square kilometers. That’s down from a peak of 26.6 million square kilometers in 2006.
This year’s hole is even smaller than the one first discovered in 1985.
“That’s really good news,” NASA scientist Paul Newman said yesterday. “That means more ozone over the hemisphere, less ultraviolet radiation at the surface.”
Earth’s ozone layer shields life on the surface from harmful solar radiation, but man-made chlorine compounds that can last in the air for 100 years nibble at the ozone, creating thinning and a gap over the Southern Hemisphere.
The hole reaches its peak in September and October and disappears by late December until the next spring in the Southern Hemisphere.