Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Inspired by Richard Keen’s interesting WUWT post on using eclipses to determine the clarity of the atmosphere, I went to the website of the Hawaiian Mauna Loa Observatory. They have some very fascinating datasets. One of them is a measurement of direct solar radiation, minute by minute, since about 1980.
I thought that I could use that dataset to determine the clarity of the atmosphere by looking at the maximum downwelling solar energy on a month by month basis. I’ve described my method of extracting the maximum solar energy from the minute by minute data in the appendix for those interested.
Now, according to Dr. Keen, the air is cleaner now than it’s been in a while:
“Based on the color and brightness of recent eclipses, we can say that Earth’s stratosphere is as clear as it has been in decades. There are very few…
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