Ozone layer an altitude of 100 kilometers from the planet's surface. The photochemical mechanisms that give rise to the ozone layer were discovered by the British physicist Sydney Chapman in 1930. Ozone in the Earth's stratosphere is created by ultraviolet light striking ordinary oxygen molecules containing two oxygen atoms (O), splitting them into individual oxygen atoms (atomic oxygen); the atomic oxygen then combines with unbroken O to create ozone, O. The ozone molecule is unstable (although, in the stratosphere, long-lived) and when ultraviolet light hits ozone it splits into a molecule of O and an individual atom of oxygen, a continuing process
Ozone layer of April and May and lowest in October. While the total amount of ozone increases moving from the tropics to higher latitudes, the concentrations are greater in high northern latitudes than in high southern latitudes, due to the ozone hole phenomenon. The highest amounts of ozone are found over the Arctic during the spring months of March and April, but the Antarctic has their lowest amounts of ozone during their summer months of September and October, The ozone layer can be depleted by free radical catalysts, including nitric oxide (NO), nitrous oxide (NO), hydroxyl (OH), atomic chlorine (Cl), and atomic