Selected Measurements of Total Arctic Column Ozone Amounts from Aura's Ozone Monitoring Instrument, 2004-2005 Arctic Winter

Images from Aura's Ozone Monitoring Instrument showing the average total column ozone during the months of January and March, and the total column ozone on the single day of 11 March. Although there was near record chemical ozone loss between January and March, comparing the January and March images shows that on average the lowest total column ozone values in polar regions are slightly higher in March than in January. This is because of the other process that brought higher ozone into the vortex region, thus compensating for the very significant chemical loss. The 11 March image shows that, despite the unremarkable overall March values, on an individual day, chemical loss and dynamical processes combined to result in localized regions of much lower ozone (which resulted in higher UV exposure at the Earth's surface for individual days and places).