Ozone Hole Is Bigger Than Ever

And it's going to take longer than expected to repair itself. The hole has reached 10.6 million square miles, an area larger than North America. So what do the other numbers tell us?

(USA TODAY)"These numbers mean the ozone is virtually gone in this layer of the atmosphere," said David Hofmann, director of the Global Monitoring Division at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory. "The depleted layer has an unusual vertical extent this year, so it appears that the 2006 ozone hole will go down as a record-setter."