Low ozone concentrations over Europe
A small ozone hole has been discovered again over Europe. However, the values are not critical for humans. Based on the evaluation of satellite data, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) announced yesterday that an ozone hole had formed over the western Atlantic, which in the following days (March 25th to April 1st, 1998) over the British Isles and northern France Central and southern Europe moved (maps from March 24th to April 1st). This phenomenon is an intermittent effect caused by global atmospheric dynamics and not primarily by ozone depletion and was last observed in March of last year.
While the average ozone concentration in our latitudes in spring is approx.390 DU (Dobson units), the value now measured is 250 to 300 DU. However, the resulting increased intensity of the UV-B radiation on the ground is not critical for humans because the position of the sun is still relatively low.
The processed satellite images clearly show the course of the small ozone hole. The data was measured by the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME) on the European satellite ERS-2, received by the European Space Agency ESA in Kiruna, pre-processed and processed at DLR's German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD) in Oberpfaffenhofen.
The ozone maps of Europe and the northern and southern hemispheres generated daily by DFD are provided by DFD's ATMOS User Center (AUC).
