Radiative properties at King Sejong Station in West Antarctica with the radiative transfer model: A surface UV-A and erythemal UV-B radiation changes

Abstract

A solar radiation model was used to investigate the UV radiation at the surface of King Sejong Station in West Antarctica. The results calculated by this model were compared with the values measured by UV-Biometer and UV-A meter during 1999-2000. In this study, the parameterization of solar radiative transfer process was based on Chou and Lee(1996). The total ozone amounts measured by Brewer Ozone Spectrophotometer and the aerosol amounts by Nakajima et al.(1996) was used as the input data of the solar radiative transfer model. And the surface albedo is assumed to be 0.20 in summer and 0.85 in winter. The sensitivity test of solar radiative transfer model was done with the variation of total ozone, aerosol amount, and surface albedo. When the cosine of solar zenith angle is 0.3, Erythemal UV-B radiation decreased 73% with the 200% increase of total ozone from 100 DU to 300 DU, but the decrease of UV-A radiation is about 1%. Also, for the same solar zenith angle, UV-A radiation was decreased 31.0% with the variation of aerosol optical thickness from 0.0 to 0.3 and Erythemal UV-B radiation was decreased only 6.1%. The increase of Erythemal UV-B radiation with the variation of surface albedo was twice that of UV-A increase. The surface Erythemal UV-B and UV-A radiation calculated by solar raditive transfer model were compared with the measured values for the relatively clear day at King Sejong Station in West Antarctica. The model calculated Erythemal UV-B radiation at the surface coincide well with the measured values except for cloudy days. But the difference between the model calculated UV-A radiation and the measured value at the surface was large because of cloud scattering effect. So, the cloud property data is needed to calculate the UV radiation more exactly at King Sejong Station in West Antarctica.