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The Atmosphere and UV-B Radiation at Ground Level

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Environmental UV Photobiology

Overview

Ultraviolet (UV) radiation emanating from the sun travels unaltered until it enters the earth’s atmosphere. Here, absorption and scattering by various gases and particles modify the radiation profoundly, so that by the time it reaches the terrestrial and oceanic biospheres, the wavelengths which are most harmful to organisms have been largely filtered out. Human activities are now changing the composition of the atmosphere, raising serious concerns about how this will affect the wavelength distribution and quantity of ground-level UV radiation.

The objective of this chapter is to give the reader familiarity with the basic concepts related to quantifying environmental UV radiation. Section 2 discusses the UV output of the sun and the geometric factors which relate the earth’s orbit and rotation to the sun’s illumination. Section 3 describes some aspects of the earth’s atmosphere, with emphasis on those atmospheric constituents which affect UV transmission. Section 4 presents fundamental concepts of absorption and scattering of atmospheric radiation and some techniques for estimating their influence on UV radiation reaching the biosphere. Biologically weighted radiation and its sensitivity to atmospheric variability are discussed in Section 5. Section 6 summarizes recent trends in UV radiation resulting from atmospheric changes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Atmospheric Chemistry Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, 80307-3000, USA

    Sasha Madronich

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  1. Sasha Madronich
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. St. John’s Institute of Dermatology, London, UK

    Antony R. Young

  2. The Norwegian Radium Hospital, Oslo, Norway

    Johan Moan

  3. Lund University, Lund, Sweden

    Lars Olof Björn

  4. Philipps University, Marburg, Germany

    Wilhelm Nultsch

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Madronich, S. (1993). The Atmosphere and UV-B Radiation at Ground Level. In: Young, A.R., Moan, J., Björn, L.O., Nultsch, W. (eds) Environmental UV Photobiology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2406-3_1

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