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The atmospheric ozone plays an important role in understanding of the processes occurring in the atmosphere and changes in the climate. Total ozone observations in Siberia were performed by Brewer MKIV No. 049 spectrophotometer in Tomsk, Western Siberia and SAOZ UV-Vis spectrometers deployed along the Arctic Circle in Salekhard aerological station since 1998 and Zhigansk aerological station in Eastern Siberia since 1991. We also use 2Z-ECC ozonesondes for ozone profile observations in winter-spring period at the Salekhard aerological station at the in Western Siberia and ECC-6A sondes at the drifting North Pole station NP-38 in the Central Arctic area. During the winter-spring season in 2011, Arctic ozone in the 19-21 km altitude region was observed to be more than 70% less that typical values. In the winter-spring of 2012, on the other hand, Arctic conditions were overall much warmer than in 2011, and no evidence of significant ozone loss was seen above the Asiatic regions of Russian Federation. The aim of the paper is to describe which and where these measurements were carried out and illustrate their performances by some examples of ozone data measured in Western and Eastern Siberia, Russia such as that which occurred in the winter-spring season of 2011. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chemical ozone destruction occurs over both polar regions in local winter-spring. In the Antarctic, essentially complete removal of lower-stratospheric ozone currently results in an ozone hole every year, whereas in the Arctic, ozone loss is highly variable and has until now been much more limited. Here we demonstrate that chemical ozone destruction over the Arctic in early 2011 was--for the first time in the observational record--comparable to that in the Antarctic ozone hole. Unusually long-lasting cold conditions in the Arctic lower stratosphere led to persistent enhancement in ozone-destroying forms of chlorine and to unprecedented ozone loss, which exceeded 80 per cent over 18-20 kilometres altitude. Our results show that Arctic ozone holes are possible even with temperatures much milder than those in the Antarctic. We cannot at present predict when such severe Arctic ozone depletion may be matched or exceeded.