This volume brings together state-of-the-art views on ultraviolet radiation, its modelling, and effects from an interdisciplinary panel of international experts. The growing field of research is presented in a sequence from the arrival of UV light at the top of the atmosphere through its transfer to various biological receptors. Modelling and current issues on UV radiative transfer in clear and turbid environments are discussed. Further, measurements and calibration methods are reviewed and, for the first time, established calibration protocols are presented in a coherent way
Final Publishable JRP Report. Issued: November 2017. Version V1.0 ; Ozone in the earth's upper atmosphere absorbs ultraviolet radiation, preventing most of it reaching the ground.This is important because ultraviolet radiation can harm life on earth, and for example lead to skin cancer.Since the 1980s, it has been known that human-produced chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) have led to recurring losses of total ozone in the Antarctic (the ozone hole), and these have also been recently observed in the Arctic, while in middle-latitudes, moderate ozone depletion has been observed. The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer is an international treaty signed in 1994 designed to protect the ozone layer by phasing out the production of substances that are responsible for ozone depletion, and it has been successful in reducing the emission of ozone-depleting substances. However, monitoring of the recovery of the ozone layer requires accurate long-term observations with reliable and well understood instruments and the development of future instrumentation. This project characterised key reference and network instruments for the traceability of ozone retrievals (or measurements), developed new instruments and devices for in-field characterisation of the existing network instruments and new ozone monitoring instruments, and generated new datasets for ozone absorption crosssections and extra-terrestrial solar reference spectrum. ; The EMRP is jointly funded by the EMRP participating countries within EURAMET and the European Union.
This study introduces an Earth observation (EO)-based system which is capable of operationally estimating and continuously monitoring the ultraviolet index (UVI) in Europe. UVIOS (i.e., UV-Index Operating System) exploits a synergy of radiative transfer models with high-performance computing and EO data from satellites (Meteosat Second Generation and Meteorological Operational Satellite-B) and retrieval processes (Tropospheric Emission Monitoring Internet Service, Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service and the Global Land Service). It provides a near-real-time nowcasting and short-term forecasting service for UV radiation over Europe. The main atmospheric inputs for the UVI simulations include ozone, clouds and aerosols, while the impacts of ground elevation and surface albedo are also taken into account. The UVIOS output is the UVI at high spatial and temporal resolution (5 km and 15 min, respectively) for Europe (i.e., 1.5 million pixels) in real time. The UVI is empirically related to biologically important UV dose rates, and the reliability of this EO-based solution was verified against ground-based measurements from 17 stations across Europe. Stations are equipped with spectral, broadband or multi-filter instruments and cover a range of topographic and atmospheric conditions. A period of over 1 year of forecasted 15 min retrievals under all-sky conditions was compared with the ground-based measurements. UVIOS forecasts were within ±0.5 of the measured UVI for at least 70 % of the data compared at all stations. For clear-sky conditions the agreement was better than 0.5 UVI for 80 % of the data. A sensitivity analysis of EO inputs and UVIOS outputs was performed in order to quantify the level of uncertainty in the derived products and to identify the covariance between the accuracy of the output and the spatial and temporal resolution and the quality of the inputs. Overall, UVIOS slightly overestimated the UVI due to observational uncertainties in inputs of cloud and aerosol. This service will hopefully contribute to EO capabilities and will assist the provision of operational early warning systems that will help raise awareness among European Union citizens of the health implications of high UVI doses. ; publishedVersion
Póster elaborado para el Quadrennial Ozone Symposium celebrado en Edimburgo del 4 al 9 de septiembre de 2016. ; This work has been supported by the European Metrology Research Programme (EMRP) within the joint research project ENV59 "Traceability for atmospheric total column ozone" (ATMOZ). The EMRP is jointly funded by the EMRP participating countries within EURAMET and the European Union.
From 25 May to 5 June 2015, the 10th regional intercomparison campaign of the Regional Brewer Calibration Center – Europe (RBCC-E) was held at El Arenosillo atmospheric sounding station of the Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial (INTA). This campaign was jointly conducted by COST Action ES1207 EUBREWNET and the Area of Instrumentation and Atmospheric Research of INTA. A total of 21 Brewers, 11 single- and 10 double-monochromator instruments from 11 countries participated and were calibrated for total column ozone (TOC) and solar UV irradiance. In this 2015 campaign we have introduced a formal approach to the characterisation of the internal instrumental stray light, the filter non-linearity and the algorithm for correcting for its effects on the TOC calculations. This work shows a general overview of the ozone comparison and the evaluation of the correction of the spectral stray light effect for the single-monochromator Brewer spectrophotometer, derived from the comparison with a reference double-monochromator Brewer instrument. At the beginning of the campaign, 16 out of the 21 participating Brewer instruments agreed within better than ±1%, and 10 instruments agreed within better than ±0.5% considering data with ozone slant column between 100 and 900DU, which does not require instrumental stray light correction. ; This article is based upon work from COST Action 1207 EUBREWNET. This work has been supported by the European Metrology Research Programme within the joint research project ENV59 "Traceability for atmospheric total column ozone" (ATMOZ). The EMRP is jointly funded by the EMRP participating countries within EURAMET and the European Union. We also gratefully acknowledge further support by the Fundación General de la Universidad de La Laguna. This study and the campaigns were supported at large part by ESA project CEOS Intercalibration of ground-pectrometers and lidars (ESRIN contract 22202/09/I-EC).
This study introduces an Earth observation (EO)-based system which is capable of operationally estimating and continuously monitoring the ultraviolet index (UVI) in Europe. UVIOS (i.e., UV-Index Operating System) exploits a synergy of radiative transfer models with high-performance computing and EO data from satellites (Meteosat Second Generation and Meteorological Operational Satellite-B) and retrieval processes (Tropospheric Emission Monitoring Internet Service, Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service and the Global Land Service). It provides a near-real-time nowcasting and short-term forecasting service for UV radiation over Europe. The main atmospheric inputs for the UVI simulations include ozone, clouds and aerosols, while the impacts of ground elevation and surface albedo are also taken into account. The UVIOS output is the UVI at high spatial and temporal resolution (5 km and 15 min, respectively) for Europe (i.e., 1.5 million pixels) in real time. The UVI is empirically related to biologically important UV dose rates, and the reliability of this EO-based solution was verified against ground-based measurements from 17 stations across Europe. Stations are equipped with spectral, broadband or multi-filter instruments and cover a range of topographic and atmospheric conditions. A period of over 1 year of forecasted 15 min retrievals under all-sky conditions was compared with the ground-based measurements. UVIOS forecasts were within ±0.5 of the measured UVI for at least 70 % of the data compared at all stations. For clear-sky conditions the agreement was better than 0.5 UVI for 80 % of the data. A sensitivity analysis of EO inputs and UVIOS outputs was performed in order to quantify the level of uncertainty in the derived products and to identify the covariance between the accuracy of the output and the spatial and temporal resolution and the quality of the inputs. Overall, UVIOS slightly overestimated the UVI due to observational uncertainties in inputs of cloud and aerosol. This service will hopefully contribute to EO capabilities and will assist the provision of operational early warning systems that will help raise awareness among European Union citizens of the health implications of high UVI doses.
This study introduces an Earth observation (EO)-based system which is capable of operationally estimating and continuously monitoring the ultraviolet index (UVI) in Europe. The UVIOS (i.e. UV-Index Operating System) exploits a synergy of radiative transfer models with high performance computing and EO data from satellites (Meteosat Second Generation and Meteorological Operational Satellite-B), and retrieval processes (Tropospheric Emission Monitoring Internet Service, Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service and the Global Land Service). It provides a near-real-time now-casting and short-term forecasting service for UV radiation over Europe. The main atmospheric inputs for the UVI simulations include ozone, clouds and aerosols while the impacts of ground elevation and surface albedo are also taken into account. The UVIOS output is the UVI at high spatial and temporal resolution (5 km and 15 minutes, respectively) for Europe (i.e. 1.5 million pixels) in real-time. The UVI is empirically related to biologically important UV dose rates and the reliability of this EO-based solution was verified against ground-based measurements from 17 stations across Europe. Stations are equipped with spectral, broadband or multi-filter instruments and cover a range of topographic and atmospheric conditions. A period of over one year of forecasted 15-min retrievals under all sky conditions were compared with the ground–based measurements. UVIOS forecasts were within ±0.5 of measured UVI for at least 70 % of the data compared at all stations. For clear sky conditions the agreement was better than 0.5 UVI for 80 % of the data. A sensitivity analysis of EO inputs and UVIOS outputs was performed in order to quantify the level of uncertainty in the derived products, and to identify the covariance between the accuracy of the output and the spatial and temporal resolution, and the quality of the inputs. Overall, UVIOS slightly overestimated UVI due to observational uncertainties in inputs of cloud and aerosol. This service will hopefully contribute to EO capabilities and will assist the provision of operational early warning systems that will help raise awareness among European Union citizens of the health implications of high UVI doses.
This study introduces an Earth observation (EO)-based system which is capable of operationally estimating and continuously monitoring the ultraviolet index (UVI) in Europe. UVIOS (i.e., UV-Index Operating System) exploits a synergy of radiative transfer models with high-performance computing and EO data from satellites (Meteosat Second Generation and Meteorological Operational Satellite-B) and retrieval processes (Tropospheric Emission Monitoring Internet Service, Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service and the Global Land Service). It provides a near-real-time nowcasting and short-term forecasting service for UV radiation over Europe. The main atmospheric inputs for the UVI simulations include ozone, clouds and aerosols, while the impacts of ground elevation and surface albedo are also taken into account. The UVIOS output is the UVI at high spatial and temporal resolution (5 km and 15 min, respectively) for Europe (i.e., 1.5 million pixels) in real time. The UVI is empirically related to biologically important UV dose rates, and the reliability of this EO-based solution was verified against ground-based measurements from 17 stations across Europe. Stations are equipped with spectral, broadband or multi-filter instruments and cover a range of topographic and atmospheric conditions. A period of over 1 year of forecasted 15 min retrievals under all-sky conditions was compared with the ground-based measurements. UVIOS forecasts were within ± 0.5 of the measured UVI for at least 70 % of the data compared at all stations. For clear-sky conditions the agreement was better than 0.5 UVI for 80 % of the data. A sensitivity analysis of EO inputs and UVIOS outputs was performed in order to quantify the level of uncertainty in the derived products and to identify the covariance between the accuracy of the output and the spatial and temporal resolution and the quality of the inputs. Overall, UVIOS slightly overestimated the UVI due to observational uncertainties in inputs of cloud and aerosol. This service will hopefully contribute to EO capabilities and will assist the provision of operational early warning systems that will help raise awareness among European Union citizens of the health implications of high UVI doses.
Póster presentado en: 9th International Workshop on Sand/Duststorms and Associated Dustfall, celebrado en Tenerife del 22 al 24 de mayo de 2018. ; This work has been performed within the framework of COST Action ES1207 "The European Brewer Network" (EUBREWNET), supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology). Part of this work has been developed within the IDEAS+ project of the European Space Agency, in collaboration with LuftBlick Earth Observation Technologies. This work has been supported by the European Metrology Research Programme (EMRP) within the joint research project ENV59 "Traceability for atmospheric total column ozone" (ATMOZ). The EMRP is jointly funded by the EMRP participating countries within EURAMET and the European Union. These activities have been partially developed in the WMO-CIMO Testbed for Aerosols and Water Vapor Remote Sensing Instruments (Izaña, Spain). We also acknowledge the support of the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of Spain and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) under the POLARMOON (CTM2015-66742-R) and AEROATLAN (CGL2015-66299-P) projects. Stratospheric ozone and spectral UV baseline monitoring in the United Kingdom is supported by DEFRA, The Department for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, since 2003. Some of the AERONET sun photometers used in this work have been calibrated within the AERONET Europe TNA, supported by the European Community-Research Infrastructure Action under the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, ACTRIS-2 grant agreement No. 654109. We gratefully the acknowledge the PIs of the Madrid, Izaña, and Tamanrasset AERONET stations.
