Retrieval of health-related UV doses from PAR measurements

Abstract. The ultraviolet index (UVI) is an important tool to raise public awareness of the risks of solar radiation overexposure. However, solar ultraviolet radiation instruments are relatively expensive, and the deployment and maintenance of a large-scale network proved impractical. In this paper, we describe a simple method for UVI and daily erythemal dose retrieval from photosynthetically active radiation (PAR – 0.40–0.70 μm) measurements. These latter are generally performed by cheaper instruments and commonly found in any ordinary meteorological station. Despite the different interactions involving UV and PAR radiation with the atmospheric components, our method is based on the solar position and cloud modification factor (CMF) that exert a quite similar influence on these electromagnetic radiation bands. We also show that this method is not suitable for shortwave radiation sensors (0.25–4.00 μm). A large dataset was used to test this method and the comparisons between UVI measurements and inferences are comparable to the instrumental errors. Thus, in this paper we show a 2nd degree regression equation for obtaining erythemal UV from PAR measurements.