The ozone hole is not a hole in the literal sense, however, it symbolizes a zone of the upper layer of the atmosphere in which reactions occur that lead to the dissipation of ozone, which protects the Earth from ultraviolet radiation.
The continuous depletion of the ozone layer over Antarctica is one of the biggest challenges facing life on our planet today, as the hole widens from time to time at varying rates, reported by scientists and research centers, stressing the importance of collective awareness of this issue, and the need for its presence and dedication in the media.
The layer, which is part of the Earth’s atmosphere, protects our skin and eyes from the ultraviolet rays that reach the earth with the sun’s rays, but the hole in it, which poses a challenge to scientists and mankind, is now three times the size of Brazil.
In a more precise sense, there is a very large area of the globe where life is vulnerable to significant and direct damage aimed at the DNA of living organisms, whether they are injured at the skin or eye level, and also have other negative effects.
The researchers fear that the expansion of this area in the future may mean that it includes populated areas.
But the situation today regarding the ozone layer is exceptional for two reasons, the first of which is that a radical change is taking place in the situation of the hole, which tended to shrink and recover during previous years, before it returned to expand.
The second is that the newly recorded area of the hole is the largest historically, as it exceeded 26 million square kilometers last September, and this expansion continues now, considering that this time of year is usually a typical time for the expansion process; as it allows the reaction process leading to ozone dissipation, as the expansion is usually monitored in September and October.
There is no direct human responsibility for this expansion, according to the hypothesis of scientists about the reasons that led to it, and they tend to blame the Tonga volcano, which erupted in January 2022, for the expansion of the ozone hole.
The researchers justify this by the fact that the explosion of the volcano was very huge, perhaps the most powerful in more than a century, and its power exceeded hundreds of times the American nuclear bomb dropped in Hiroshima, according to NASA.
The earthquake that struck the state of Tonga, an archipelago located in the Pacific Ocean, completely cut off the country from the world, disrupting many services there, in addition to huge gas emissions released into the atmosphere, and emissions found their way to the Antarctic sky to cause reactions in the ozone layer that doubled its breadth.
According to Antja Innes, an atmospheric scientist and researcher at the European Copernicus Earth Observation Program, the volcano injected the stratosphere-the second layer of the Earth’s atmosphere – with a lot of water vapor.
This, according to the researcher, led to interactions in the layer and its depletion in the area of the ozone hole above the South Pole.
The ozone hole is not a hole in the literal sense, however, it symbolizes a zone of the upper layer of the atmosphere in which reactions occur that lead to the dissipation of ozone, which protects the Earth from ultraviolet radiation.
Scientifically, this dissipation is caused by the leakage of certain gases that drive reactions with the ozone layer, and these reactions take place in the weak zone of ozone, which is the area above the South Pole.
According to the American space science agency (NASA), man did not detect any change in the composition of the ozone layer in the atmosphere before 1979, but in the early eighties, changes were observed over the Antarctic every spring, leading to depletion of ozone, which leads to the penetration of harmful rays.
This decay was called the” ozone hole”, a designation first coined by the American chemist and Nobel Prize for science winner Sherwood Rowland. The United Nations has designated the sixteenth of September, the International Day for the preservation of the ozone layer.
The ozone layer dissipates, or in other words, the hole widens with the presence of certain gases, namely chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), halons, carbon tetrachloride.
And when released into the atmosphere, these substances can reach the stratosphere, where ultraviolet rays disintegrate them, releasing chlorine and bromine atoms that destroy ozone molecules.
Humans play a major role in the negative impact on the ozone layer through the release of emissions of those gases produced by the activities of freezing food, the manufacture of many medical preparations and agricultural chemicals, in addition to many refrigeration and fire extinguishing systems and others.
