Antarctic Ozone Hole Maximum Area, 1979-2025

  • Released Monday, April 20, 2026
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Ozone is Earth’s natural sunscreen, shielding life from dangerous solar ultraviolet radiation. Human-produced chemicals in our atmosphere—such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), used for many years as refrigerants and in aerosol spray cans—have depleted the Earth’s ozone layer. Scientists first recognized the potential for harmful effects of CFCs on ozone in the early 1970s. In the 1980s, governments around the world woke up to the destruction of the ozone layer and in 1987 negotiated the Montreal Protocol—an international treaty designed to protect the ozone layer by banning CFCs and similar ozone-depleting chemicals.

Since the mid-1990s, global ozone levels have become relatively stable. In fact, because of the Montreal Protocol, model simulations suggest the size of the hole should return to its pre-1980 levels by about 2075. Here, the globes show ozone data on the day that the minimum ozone concentration was reached over Antarctica, each year from 1979 and 2025.

Antarctic Ozone Hole Maximum Size

This visualization shows the Antarctic ozone hole on the day it had the largest size between 1979 and 2025.

Antarctoc Ozone Hole with 220 Dobson Unit Contour

This visualization shows total ozone over the Antarctic on the day of maximum ozone hole area for each year between 1979 and 2025. A yellow contour line outlines the region where total ozone is below 220 Dobson Units, which is the where the maximum ozone hole area is calculated.

Credits

NASA

Datasets used

Note: While we identify the data sets used on this page, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.

This page was originally published on Monday, April 20, 2026.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, April 29, 2026 at 5:09 PM EDT.