VATIS UPDATE Article

The hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica became an international cause for concern in the latter half of the 20th Century, but as European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) Atmospheric Composition Product Development Team Leader Dr. Christian Retscher points out, issues relating to ozone levels are complex and wide-reaching.

EUMETSAT’s Metop-A (launched in 2006) and Metop-B (2012) satellites, flying in a sun-synchronised polar orbit approximately 817km above the Earth’s surface, carry an instrument called GOME-2 (Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment), which is dedicated to measuring ozone in the atmosphere.

“The primary goal is to measure how the ozone layer is changing in general, not only the so-called ozone hole over Antarctica. There, meteorological conditions favour the accelerated depletion of stratospheric ozone, but ozone is thinning over the Arctic as well. “When we look at how the ozone is behaving over the long term, what we hope to see is that stratospheric ozone is recovering somewhat. “Specifically, measurements from the last couple of years hint at a slight recovery of the stratospheric ozone layer over the South Pole,” explained Christian.

The GOME-2 instruments are dedicated to monitoring ozone but are not the only satellite-borne instruments taking ozone measurements. Metop satellites also carry the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) instruments, which measure ozone as well. Other relevant European ozone-monitoring instruments were GOME on ERS-2 , or SCIAMACHY, MIPAS and GOMOS, which were flown on ESA’s Envisat satellite.Planning is well in hand to continue monitoring ozone into the future.