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Ozone hole goes large again


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Ozone hole extension 2023

Measurements from the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite show that this year’s ozone hole over Antarctica is one of the biggest on record. The hole, which is what scientists call an ‘ozone depleting area,’ reached a size of 26 million sq km on 16 September 2023. This is roughly three times the size of Brazil.

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      At almost 8 million square miles (20 million square kilometers), the monthly average ozone-depleted region in the Antarctic this year was nearly three times the size of the contiguous U.S. The hole reached its greatest one-day extent for the year on Sept. 28 at 8.5 million square miles (22.4 million square kilometers).
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      IXPE, which continues to provide unprecedented data enabling groundbreaking discoveries about celestial objects across the universe, is a joint NASA and Italian Space Agency mission with partners and science collaborators in 12 countries. IXPE is led by Marshall. Ball Aerospace, headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado, manages spacecraft operations together with the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder.
      Learn more about IXPE’s ongoing mission here:
      https://www.nasa.gov/ixpe
      Elizabeth Landau
      NASA Headquarters
      elizabeth.r.landau@nasa.gov
      202-358-0845
      Lane Figueroa
      NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center
      256-544-0034
      lane.e.figueroa@nasa.gov
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