Since the end of the nineteen-sixties, there has been some controversy concerning the matter of a decrease in the transmission coefficient of the atmosphere and its possible longrange effects on world climate. McCormic and Ludwig (1967) hypothesized that the effects of man's pollution of his environment were monotonically increasing along with the world population, whereas the increase in atmospheric turbidity due to volcanic eruptions might have temporary effects on world climate. According to their hypothesis, the time series curve of the transmission coefficient of the atmosphere must be interpreted as follows; the effects of volcanic eruptions are superimposed on a longer-term tsrend, a trend of decreasing transmission coefficient, which could have man-made pollution as its origin.
In this paper, the author reports the secular variation in the transmission coefficient of the atmosphere at Tosa-Shimi.zu, Japan (32°43'N, 133°01'E), by considering the influence of both these aerosol sources on the radiation measurements. The transmission coefficient of the atmosphere is calculated from surface observations of the total amount of direct solar radiation, which are made on a routine basis at 14 meteorological stations in Japan, including the Tosa-Shimizu Meteorological Station. The Tosa-Shimizu Meteorological Station has been in operation for 48 years since August 1932, and many of the days in each year were clear or partly cloudy. The population within a radius of 20 km around the station is the minimum of all, i, e. approximately 25 thousand, and it is remote from major local sources of pollution in Japan, such as Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Kita-Kyushu, and so on. Therefore, this station is particularly suited for monitoring the solar radiation and for its application to estimate of secular variation in the transmission coefficient of the background atmosphere in Japan.
The number of data collected here reached 1, 627 despite missing data for two periods, i. e. from May 1945 to September 1946 and from July 1973 to February 1974. Fig. 4 shows the plot of the transmission coefficient of the atmosphere against time for the period of 35 year. There exists a discernible trend in the transmission coefficient for the period from 1945 to 1979 despite of the considerable scatter of data. The liner regression line was obtained by the least square method as follows;
A(
t)=0.7445-1.822×10
-3(
t-1945)
where t is time in year A. D., and
A (
t) the transmission coefficient in the year
t. The transmission coefficient predicted by the formula above decreases from 0.744 in 1945 to 0. 681 in 1980, and the mean rate of its decrease is 0. 018 per decade. This trend is interpreted to have man-made pollution as its origin.
To estimate the periodic character of the departure of the transmission coefficient from the longer-term trend, a harmonic analysis has been carried out. The result of the analysis shows that the pattern of the departure is distinctly periodic with a predominant period of one year. The next most predominant period is six months. The power of the six months harmonic is only 17. 5 percent of that of the one year harmonic, and powers of the other harmonics are less than 4 percent. The range of the annual variation is 0.1289, which is approximately 71-fold compared with the annual decrease due to a longer-term trend. Such a pronounced annual variation must result from the Forbes effect, the annual variation in the amount of water vapor within a whole atmosphere, and the exchange of air masses between cold and hot seasons, but not from the influences of volcanic eruptions. Since volcanic aerosols injected through the tropopause into the stratosphere can remain there for several years, the explosive volcanic eruptions must result in the periodic variation in the transmission coefficient with relatively longer periods.
View full abstract