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Measurements of biologically effective solar radiation using erythemal weighted broadband meters

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Abstract

In this paper, we describe conversion factors (CF) for the calculation of biologically effective irradiances (BEI) from erythemal irradiance for three effects: photosynthesis of previtamin D3, psoriasis healing, and inactivation of the SARS-Cov-2 virions. CFs were empirically derived from measurements of spectral solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation during all sky conditions at four mid-latitude sites in the Northern Hemisphere, namely Aosta, Belsk, Reading, and San Diego. These CFs were found to depend on solar zenith angle (SZA) and total column ozone, but are largely independent (within ± 5% for SZA < 60°) of local conditions such as surface albedo, visibility and other local atmospheric patterns. The values of these empirical CFs are consistent with analytical CFs derived with radiative transfer calculations (model FastRT) for clear-sky and overcast conditions. To validate these analytical CFs, one-hour radiant exposures for the three biological effects were calculated from erythemal measurements at Reading between 2012 and 2021 and compared with similar exposures calculated directly from the spectral UV measurements. The two datasets agreed within 10% for SZA < 65°, demonstrating the utility of the conversion method. These results suggest that the proposed analytical CFs can be used with confidence to estimate radiant exposures for the three biological effects from measurements of the UV Index at any northern mid-latitude site.

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Data availability

The spectral data for Aosta, Reading and San Diego is freely available from the World Ozone and Ultraviolet Radiation Data Centre (WOUDC) at the website https://woudc.org. The Belsk spectral data is available at https://github.com/BelskSpectraUV/brewer.

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Funding

This work was financed by the Institute of Geophysics of the Polish Academy of Sciences with a subsidy from the Ministry of Education and Science in Poland and the Chief Inspectorate of Environmental Protection under grant GIOŚ/31/2023/DMŚ/NFOŚiGW.

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  1. Institute of Geophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland

    Agnieszka Czerwińska & Janusz Krzyścin

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  1. Agnieszka Czerwińska
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Credit author statement (A. Czerwińska – AC, J. Krzyścin – JK): AC, JK Conceptualization; AC, JK Data curation; AC, JK Formal analysis; AC, JK Funding acquisition; AC, JK Investigation; AC Methodology; JK Project administration; AC, JK Resources; AC Software; JK Supervision; AC, JK Validation; AC Visualization; AC, JK Roles/Writing—original draft; and AC, JK Writing—review & editing.

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Correspondence to Agnieszka Czerwińska.

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Czerwińska, A., Krzyścin, J. Measurements of biologically effective solar radiation using erythemal weighted broadband meters. Photochem Photobiol Sci 23, 479–492 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43630-023-00532-z

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