{"id":675214,"date":"2026-11-05T01:02:08","date_gmt":"2026-11-05T01:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/675214\/"},"modified":"2026-11-05T01:02:08","modified_gmt":"2026-11-05T01:02:08","slug":"antarctica-ozone-hole-grows-but-prognosis-remains-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/675214\/","title":{"rendered":"Antarctica Ozone Hole Grows, but Prognosis Remains Good"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"storyParagraph\">&#13;<br \/>\n                                        The gash in Earth&#8217;s protective sunscreen has logged a worrying new data point\u2014but scientists say the long game still looks good. A joint NOAA-NASA report finds the Antarctic ozone hole in 2026 swelled to its biggest size in 10 years and the seventh-largest since tracking began nearly five decades ago. At its peak on Sept. 18, it spanned about 10.5 million square miles, roughly 90% of the record set in 2000. Researchers blame an unusually strong and long-lived polar vortex that kept frigid air locked over Antarctica and prolonged ozone destruction, <a href=\"https:\/\/abcnews.com\/US\/ozone-hole-2026-largest-decade-long-term-recovery\/story?id=137856081\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ABC News<\/a> reports.&#13;\n                                    <\/p>\n<p class=\"storyParagraph\">&#13;<br \/>\n                                        Even so, they stress that the global phaseout of chlorofluorocarbons is working: The hole likely would have been up to 2 million square miles larger without those curbs, and models still project a mostly healed ozone layer by the 2070s. &#8220;The annual ozone hole has been forming later in the season in recent years, which tells us the ozone layer is healing,&#8221; said Paul Newman, longtime leader of NASA&#8217;s ozone research team at the Goddard Space Flight Center, per a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.noaa.gov\/news-release\/noaa-nasa-release-measurements-of-2026-ozone-hole\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NOAA release<\/a>.&#13;\n                                    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; The gash in Earth&#8217;s protective sunscreen has logged a worrying new data point\u2014but scientists say the long&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":675215,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[17221,3224,246,61,60,91,4289,285968,23191,82],"class_list":["post-675214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-antarctica","tag-earth","tag-environment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-nasa","tag-noaa","tag-ozone-hole","tag-polar-vortex","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=675214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/675215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}