if you thought depletion of stratospheric ozone layer happens only over the polar regions, it's time you relocated your view tropically. For, scientists have found the ozone layer over the Indo-Gangetic (ig) basin is getting seriously compromised, due to, among other things, the increasing load of atmospheric pollution.

Carried out jointly by researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology (iit) in Kanpur and the George Mason University in the us , the study found the decadal variation in the ozone column over the densely-populated basin is almost three times the predicted trend for the decade ending 2003.

The scientists measured the total ozone column (toc) over 14 cities across the country using data provided by two us satellites