OMI Updates

27 November 2006: OMI sees eruption Nyamulagira - November 27, 2006, Mount Nyamulagira erupted. Situated near the city of Goma in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the volcano posed a danger to nearby wildlife as the animals could fall ill after eating ash-coated vegetation. Besides ash and possible lava, the volcano also released sulfur dioxide. The Ozone Monitoring Instrument on NASA's Aura satellite tracked the emission of this gas from the volcano from November 28 to December 4, 2006.

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NASA's Earth Observatory

19 October 2006: NASA and NOAA: ozone hole is a double record breaker - NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists report this year's ozone hole in the polar region of the Southern Hemisphere has broken records for area and depth. This report was partly based on data, gathered bij OMI. The Ozone Monitoring Instrument on NASA's Aura satellite measures the total amount of ozone from the ground to the upper atmosphere over the entire Antarctic continent.

From September 21 to 30, the average area of the ozone hole was the largest ever observed, at 10.6 million square miles, according to Paul Newman, atmospheric scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. If the stratospheric weather conditions had been normal, the ozone hole would be expected to reach a size of about 8.9 to 9.3 million square miles, about the surface area of North America.

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NASA's Earth Observatory

July 6, 2006: Scientists find antarctic ozone hole to recover later than expected - Scientists from NASA and other agencies have concluded that the ozone hole over the Antarctic will recover around 2068, nearly 20 years later than previously believed.

Researchers from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) have developed a new tool, a math-based computer model, to predict the timing of ozone hole recovery. Their findings will be published tomorrow in Geophysical Research Letters. 

The model accurately reproduces the ozone hole area in the Antarctic stratosphere over the past 27 years. Using the model, the researchers predict that the ozone hole will recover in 2068, not in 2050 as currently believed.

The researchers also show that the ozone hole has not yet started to significantly shrink, something they predict will not start to occur until 2018.

The researchers included ozone data from the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) on NASA's Earth Probe TOMS satellite, gas measurements from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) aboard NASA's Aura satellite, temperature information from NOAA's polar orbiting series satellites, and data captured by NOAA ground stations and weather balloons to create the new prediction model.

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NASA's Earth Observatory

NASA Study Finds Clock Ticking Slower On Ozone Hole Recovery