text: The thickness of the ozone layer varies worldwide and is generally thinner near the equator and thicker near the poles. Thickness refers to how much ozone is in a column over a given area and varies from season to season. The reasons for these variations are due to atmospheric circulation patterns and solar intensity.
  The majority of ozone is produced over the tropics and is transported towards the poles by stratospheric wind patterns. In the northern hemisphere these patterns, known as the Brewer–Dobson circulation, make the ozone layer thickest in the spring and thinnest in the fall. When ozone is produced by solar UV radiation in the tropics, it is done so by circulation lifting ozone-poor air out of the troposphere and into the stratosphere where the sun photolyzes oxygen molecules and turns them into ozone. Then, the ozone-rich air is carried to higher latitudes and drops into lower layers of the atmosphere.
  Research has found that the ozone levels in the United States are highest in the spring months 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, with spring ozone columns in high northern latitudes occasionally exceeding 600 DU and averaging 450 DU whereas 400 DU constituted a usual maximum in the Antarctic  before anthropogenic ozone depletion. This difference occurred naturally because of the weaker polar vortex and stronger Brewer–Dobson circulation in the northern hemisphere owing to that hemisphere’s large mountain ranges and greater contrasts between land and ocean temperatures. The difference between high northern and southern latitudes has increased since the 1970s 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 the lowest amounts of ozone during the summer months of September and October,