Figure 1
From: Persistent extreme ultraviolet irradiance in Antarctica despite the ozone recovery onset
Large ozone losses in late spring 2020 led to extremes of surface ultraviolet radiation at the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. (a) Progress of the daily maximum UV index measured on King George Island in late 2020 and early 2021 (red line). The gray shading indicates the highest and lowest values measured over the period 2016–2019 while the white line indicates the mean over the same period. (b) Progress of the total ozone column (TOC) for 2020 (red line). The gray shading indicates the highest and lowest values measured over the period 1979–2019 while the white line indicates the mean over the same period. Note that although 2020 was the lowest value for early December, the ozone has shown similarly low values in late spring in the past. Multi-satellite data (TOMS instruments onboard the Nimbus-7 satellite, on the Meteor-3 satellite, and on the Earth Probe satellite, as well as the OMI instrument onboard the Aura satellite) were used for this plot. (c) Mean of the total ozone column over Antarctica from 24 November 2020 to 4 December 2020. The dashed line indicates the 220 Dobson units (DU) threshold that defines the ozone hole. The locations of King George Island (62°12′S, 58°58′W) and Palmer Station (64°46′S, 64°03′W) are shown in the plot. Note that the ozone hole was not centered on the pole in late spring 2020. Data from OMI instrument onboard the Aura satellite were used for this plot. The plots were generated using Python’s Matplotlib library71.
