Washington: The first significant ozone hole above the Antarctic is now as big as North America, scientists have claimed.
Spanning about 25 million square kilometers, the ozone hole over the South Pole reached its maximum annual size on September 14, becoming the fifth largest on record, they said.

The largest Antarctic ozone hole ever recorded occurred in 2006, at a size of 27.5 million square km, a size documented by Nasa’s Earth-observing Aura satellite, LiveScience reported.

A huge hole that appeared in the Earth's protective ozone layer above the Arctic in 2011 was the largest recorded in the Northern Hemisphere, triggering worries the event could occur again and be even worse, scientists said in a report on Monday.

The ozone layer high in the stratosphere acts like a giant shield against the Sun's ultraviolet (UV) radiation, which can cause skin cancers and cataracts.

Since the 1980s, scientists have recorded an ozone hole every summer above the Antarctic at the bottom of the globe.

London: Researchers in Australia have claimed that the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica is on the road to recovery, 22 years after the Montreal Protocol to ban chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and related ozone-destroying chemicals came into force.

The team is the first to detect a recovery in baseline average springtime ozone levels in the region.

Shift in rainfall patterns across Southern Hemisphere The Antarctic ozone hole is about one-third to blame for Australia's recent series of droughts, say scientists. Writing in the journal Science, they conclude that the hole has shifted wind and rainfall patterns right across the Southern Hemisphere, even the tropics. Their climate models suggest the effect has been notably strong over Austr

Geneva: Record loss of the ozone, the atmosphere layer that shields life from the sun's harmful rays, has been observed over the Arctic in recent months, the World Meteorological Organization said.

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The missed data: Looking for long-term patterns in springtime data for the Antarctic helped the team to discover the ozone hole. This file photo shows the ozone hole split into two separate holes.