Relations between erythemal UV dose, global solar radiation, total ozone column and aerosol optical depth at Uccle, Belgium

Abstract

Abstract. At Uccle, a long time series (1991–2013) of simultaneous measurements of erythemal ultraviolet (UV) dose, global solar radiation, total ozone column (TOC) and Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) (at 320.1 nm) is available which allows for an extensive study of the changes in the variables over time. A change-point analysis, which determines whether there is a significant change in the mean of the time series, is applied to the monthly anomalies time series of the variables. Only for erythemal UV dose and TOC, a significant change point (without any known instrumental cause) was present in the time series around February 1998 and March 1998 respectively. The change point in TOC corresponds with results found in literature, where the change in ozone levels (around 1997) is attributed to the recovery of ozone. Linear trends were determined for the different (monthly anomalies) time series. Erythemal UV dose, global solar radiation and TOC all increase with respectively 7, 4 and 3% per decade. AOD shows an (insignificant) negative trend of −8% per decade. These trends agree with results found in literature for sites with comparable latitudes. A multiple linear regression (MLR) analysis is applied to the data in order to study the influence of global solar radiation, TOC and AOD on the erythemal UV dose. Together these parameters are able to explain 94% of the variation in erythemal UV dose. Most of the variation (56%) in erythemal UV dose is explained by global solar radiation. The regression model performs well with a slight tendency to underestimate the measured erythemal UV doses and with a Mean Absolute Bias Error (MABE) of 18%. However, in winter, negative erythemal UV dose values are modeled. Applying the MLR to the individual seasons solves this issue. The seasonal models have an adjusted R2 value higher than 0.8 and the correlation between modeled and measured erythemal UV dose values is higher than 0.9 for each season. The summer model gives the best performance, with an absolute mean error of only 6%. Again, global solar radiation is the factor that contributes the most to the variation in erythemal UV dose, so there is no doubt about the necessity to include this factor in the regression models. A large part of the influence of AOD is already represented by the global solar radiation parameter. Therefore the individual contribution of AOD to erythemal UV dose is so low. For this reason, it seems unnecessary to include AOD in the MLR analysis. Including TOC however, is justified as the adjusted R2 increases and the MABE of the model decreases compared to a model where only global solar radiation is used as explanatory variable.