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WMO monitors the Earth's ozone layer in conjunction with partners such as the Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service, NASA and the Environment and Climate Change Canada.

This year's hole resembles the one that formed in 2018, which was also a considerable size.

\"There is much variability in how far ozone hole events develop each year,\" the director of Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, Vincent-Henri Peuch, said in a statement.

\"PHOTO:
STOCK PHOTO/Getty Images
PHOTO: Earth is seen from space in this stock photo.
>

Peuch called for the continued enforcement of the 1987 international Montreal Protocol, which bans emissions of ozone-depleting chemicals. Data \"clearly show a trend in decreasing area of the ozone hole\" since a ban on halocarbons was enacted, according to WMO.

The ozone layer, however, has the potential to return to pre-1980 levels over Antarctica by 2060, a scientific assessment published by the WMO and the United Nations in 2018 concluded.

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