Ozone hole at top size?

The so-called "hole" in the earth's protective ozone layer is at a new record — 10.6 million square miles of sky around the South Pole — even though most nations agreed back in 1987 to phase out the chemicals that cause it.

The number was reported today by U.S. government scientists, who said protecting the ozone layer was still clearly the right thing to do, but that it's taking longer than originally expected for the ozone layer to heal. A 10.6 million mile gap in it is about the size of North America.

"It's going to be like this for the next decade," said Paul A. Newman, a senior research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "And then it will start tipping over, and decreasing, and be gone around 2070."