Global surface ultraviolet radiation climatology from TOMS and ERBE data

A global climatology of biologically active solar ultraviolet radiation (UVR) at the Earth's surface is derived using NASA total ozone mapping spectrometer (TOMS) measurements of column ozone abundance and NASA Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) measurements of solar reflectance from the Earth-atmosphere system. These two sources of satellite data are used as input to a delta-Eddington radiative transfer model to estimate climatological cloud opacity and thereby demonstrate how surface UVR varies with geography and season. The surface UVR fluxes are spectrally resolved to enable weighted integration with any biological action spectrum. Solar elevation is shown to be more important than total column ozone abundance in governing the variability of surface UVR over large geographic areas, although some regions with pronounced local minima in ozone (30 Dobson units or more) will cause noticeable enhancements of integrated UV-B (280-315 nm) flux relative to UV-A (315-400 nm). The greatest variability in surface UVR within a given climate zone is induced by cloud cover. During summer, regions that show lower surface UVR fluxes relative to their surrounding regions include the eastern United States (versus the western United States), India, China (in the vicinity of the Yangtze River), and Japan (relative to the surrounding oceans). Cloud cover over tropical rainforest areas reduces the surface UVR flux relative to ocean areas at the same latitudes. The UVR cloud transmission derived from the TOMS and ERBE data correlates with an independent climatology of global cloud coverage. The UVR mapping method, based on the TOMS and ERBE data, allows a direct investigation of diurnal variability and a rigorous calculation of the biologically relevant integrated daily dose of UVR. However, it is shown that a UVR mapping method based on TOMS data alone, which is limited to only local noon satellite measurements, can make defensible estimates of the integrated daily UVR dose and the instantaneous local noon UVR surface flux.