UV Index and UV dose distribution for Australia (1997-2001)

Successful efforts have been made to raise awareness of the health hazards of ultraviolet radiation (UV) radiation via educational programs, measurements and UV forecasts. It is felt that the use of the UV Index as the standard (WHO 2002) to report UV radiation levels and an updated Australian UV climatology will help to further alert people to the levels of UV radiation over Australia. In this paper clear and cloudy-sky ultraviolet (UV) radiation for Australia is derived with the Bureau of Meteorology UV system using total ozone amounts from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) datasets (1997-2001) as input. Seasonal and annual averages of clear-sky UV fluxes weighted by the erythemal action spectrum and integrated over the 290-400 nm wavelength interval, daily total erythemal dose (UV dose) and ozone distributions are presented. Cloudy-sky UV Index is derived from daily UV measurements, and the monthly averages of total cloud amounts from the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) D2 datasets (1997-2001). For several Australian cities the model monthly and seasonal average of UV Index over the five-year period are presented and compared with the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) measurements and with the operational clear-sky Bureau of Meteorology UV system, which has NOAA NESDIS TOVS total ozone as input.