The ozone hole over the Antarctic is significantly smaller in 2025 than in previous years, ranking as the fifth-smallest it’s been since 1992, according to a new report by NOAA and NASA scientists.
The ozone hole reached its greatest one-day extent for 2025 in early September, measuring 8.83 million square miles, about 30% smaller than the largest hole on record in 2006.
The so-called “ozone hole” is not an actual hole in the planet’s ozone layer, but rather a large region of Earth’s stratosphere with extremely low ozone concentrations.
I remember reading somewhere that while the hole is closing, due to the massive increase of rocket launches it’s actually thinning so we may not be as protected from the sun as we think we are.