ENVIRONMENTAL INCIDENTS


This year's Antarctic ozone hole is the smallest one since 1988, but this has little to do with earthly activities and much to do with weird weather in the stratosphere, U.S. government scientists said. The ozone hole has also split into two pieces, a new wrinkle on a phenomenon that scientists first observed in the 1970s, and have tracked as one measure of the impact of pollution. The 2002 edition of the ozone hole covers about 6 million square miles, well below the 9 million square miles seen for the last six years at this time of year. Late September is generally the time scientists see the most ozone loss. "This is smallest ozone hole since 1988, but that's still a lot of ozone loss," said Paul Newman, an ozone researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center outside Washington