* Astronomy

Despite near-record levels of chemical ozone destruction in the Arctic this winter, observations from NASA's Aura spacecraft showed that other atmospheric processes restored ozone amounts to near average and stopped high levels of harmful ultraviolet radiation from reaching Earth's surface.



The Aura (Latin for breeze) spacecraft was launched July 15, 2004. The design life was five years with an operational goal of six years.
Aura flies in formation about 15 minutes behind Aqua.
Aura is part of the Earth Observing System (EOS), a program dedicated to monitoring the complex interactions that affect the globe using NASA satellites and data systems.

"This was one of the most unusual Arctic winters ever. Arctic lower stratospheric temperatures were the lowest on record. But other conditions like wind patterns and air motions were less conducive to ozone loss this year." - Dr. Gloria Manney of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, US, who led the Microwave Limb Sounder analyses.

Extensive ozone loss occurs each winter over the Antarctica (the "ozone hole") due to the extreme cold there and its strong, long-lived polar vortex (a band of winds that forms each winter at high latitudes). This vortex isolates the region from middle latitudes.
In contrast, the Arctic winter is warmer and its vortex is weaker and shorter-lived. As a result, Arctic ozone loss has always been lower, more variable and much more difficult to quantify.

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