OZONE HOLE. Using a mapping spectrometer, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center rendered this 3-D image of the hole in the ozone layer high above Antarctica (above). Scientists discovered the hole in the 1980s, and every austral spring the phenomenon reappears. When chlorofluorocarbons first entered international consumerism and people hailed them as wonder compounds, nobody expected that CFCs would rise into the upper atmosphere and destroy the ozone that protects Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation.