Abstract

Abstract. A method is presented that combines individual ground based ultraviolet (UV) measurements and satellite data from MSG (Meteosat Second Generation) to generate a UV-Index map all over the region of Austria. Cloud modification factors (CMFs) gathered from satellite images give an area wide information of the cloud situation but compared to ground based measurements significant discrepancies have been found. These discrepancies are especially large for high mountain stations but also for low altitude sites differences between satellite derived and ground based data in the order of 15% have been found. To overcome these discrepancies a correction procedure based on the correlation of both data sets at the pixel of the measurement stations is developed. The uncertainty of the final UV-Index map is evaluated exemplarily for the pixel of the measurement sites Bad Vöslau and München by eliminating the information of both sites from the UV-Index map generation process and comparing afterwards calculated and measured results. More than 5000 maps for all weather conditions have been evaluated leading to a mean agreement of 1.02 (standard deviation ±0.31, Bad Vöslau) and 1.01 (standard deviation ±0.34, München) between calculated and measured UV-Indexes.

Highlights

  • Since the discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole in 1985 several studies of stratospheric ozone depletion have been performed showing that this phenomenon is confined to the Antarctic continent

  • Since one aim of the Austrian UVB Monitoring network is to increase the awareness of possible health risks induced by long-term exposure to solar UV radiation, all measurements and derived results including the UV-Index map are open to the public at http://www.uv-index.at/

  • Cloud modification factors gathered from satellite images give an area wide information of the cloud situation but compared to ground based measurements significant discrepancies have been found

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Summary

Introduction

Since the discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole in 1985 several studies of stratospheric ozone depletion have been performed showing that this phenomenon is confined to the Antarctic continent This fact led to concerns about increasing UV radiation at the earth’s surface and motivated. On the other hand satellite images provide area-wide information of the atmosphere and the surface. We present a method that uses a combination of ground based measurements as well as satellite derived data to calculate an area-wide UV-Index map of Austria. On one hand this method benefits from high accuracy of ground measurements and on the other hand from high geographical coverage of the satellite data

Satellite images from MSG
The Austrian UVB monitoring network
Method
Cloud modification factors from satellite images
Correlation of ground based and satellite derived CMF
Correction of satellite derived cloud modification factors
UV-Index map
Findings
Conclusions

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