UV-Index Over The Polar Regions:

It is well known that during October the Ozone Hole over the antartic continent gets its largest expansion.
 
OzoneHole (54 kB) shows the area of decreased ozone over the antartic continent on October 23, 1996.

 

Ozone-Hole-Movie (*.avi, 5.5 MB) shows the annual behaviour of total ozone over antartica and the southern hemisphere during 1996.
 

To this the UV-Index rises up to values in the range of 5-6, see

 
UV-Index Antartica. (39 kB)


The air mass on October 23 over the Southern Hemisphere (antartic summer) is equivalent to that on April 23 over the Northern Hemisphere (arctic summer).

So for comparison the UV-Index over the Northern Hemisphere on April 23, 1995 is plotted in


UV-Index Arctica. (39 kB)


The "UV-Index-Arctica" shows a very large region with an UV-Index in the range of 1 which is very seldom on the Southern Hemisphere.

It can be seen that the UV-Index over the antarctic continent reaches values which are comparable to that for Central- and South-Europe at the end of April.

Note: The used ozone data are from NOAA.