Modeling Ultraviolet Radiation for Mexican Conditions

Abstract

Water pollution is an important problem in Mexico as it's in other countries around the world. The UV Solar Radiation can be useful for water detoxification, unfortunately now a days in Mexico doesn’t exist robust data bases about UV Solar Radiation and it's the first obstacle to develop projects like that. By other hand, the UV Solar Radiation is the responsible of several diseases like cataracts and melanoma and can detonate other illnesses. In Mexico, cataracts are considered a public health problem according with the health sector.In this work was developeda correlation between Global Radiation and UV Solar Radiation in Mexico City, taking advantage of the existing databases aboutGlobal Radiation. In order to find an appropriate model, it was necessary in first place to perform a statistical and seasonal analysis of Global and UV Solar Radiations, concluding that a linear model was the one approaching most between both variables. The results for Mexico City were that UV Solar Radiation is equal to 3.57% of horizontal Global Radiation. The next step was to study thecloudiness influence on the results obtained and for that reason, the clearness index was analyzed. Another result of this was that duringthesummer, when most of the days were partly cloudy, higher levels of UV Solar Radiation were reached. It was because the small water drops in the atmosphereactuatedas small lenses and this factor affects directly the UV Solar Radiation flow.For this reason this work aims to develop a UV Solar Radiation statistical model for mexican conditions and it will be validated using spectral models (SMART'S [1])and ground measures that will be taken with carefully calibratedradiometers and UV spectrometers.