For this interactive exercise, you will use ESA’s Climate from Space application to look at ozone. The ozone layer protects life on Earth from ultraviolet solar radiation, but ozone is also a greenhouse gas and at ground level it is harmful to human health.

1.   Click here to view the ’Is ozone Good or Bad’ story on the ESA Climate from Space tool, and go through all 6 pages to learn more about the ozone layer, ground-level ozone, and monitoring ozone from space.
2. Once finished, click on ‘Back to Stories’ on the top left-hand corner, and then click again to go ‘back to globe’.
3. Now choose the ‘Data Layers’ button on the top right and choose ‘ozone’ in the menu. This should open the ozone layer on the globe.
4. Click and drag the globe down with your mouse until you are looking at the Antarctic, then press play on the timeline to see levels of ozone from 1979 to 2019. The lowest concentration of zone is shown in purple and the highest in yellow.
5. Which year do you start to see the ozone hole forming? Which months have the lowest and highest concentrations? And what changes do you see up until 2019?
6. Continue to play around with the ESA Climate from Space tool and have a look at the other relevant atmospheric compounds from ‘Data Layers’ button!