Weather

Thickness of the ozone layer in Uccle

The greatest part of the ozone occurs in the stratosphere between about 10 and 30 km height. Ozone is nevertheless in every layer of the atmosphere. When we can bring the ozone in all those layers together in only one fictif layer under standard conditions of pressure and temperature (at 1013,25 hPa and 0°C), we would obtain a small layer with a determined thickness. This thickness of the ozone layer is expressed in Dobson units, that defines the thickness in hundredths of a millimetre.

The blue and black line show the day averages of the thickness of the ozone layer respectively during the running year and the preceding year. The orange line shows the average values observed between 1971 and 2024. The orange band indicates the limits within 90% of all day averages.

Due to the variability of the atmospheric circulation, in particular in the higher atmosphere, it is not unusual that current daily values show maxima and minima outside these boundaries.This variability of total ozone is largest between December and April. Between February and April, we can also encounter for short periods very low total ozone values, due to the ozone hole phenomena over the Arctic. If this coincides with sunny days, the uv index can already reach sufficient high values, posing a health risk.

You can find more information on the web pages of the ozone research group of the RMI.

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