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EOS, TRANSACTIONS AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION, VOL. 85, NO. 38, doi:10.1029/2004EO380004, 2004

Global Dimming Comes of Age

Shabtai Cohen

ARO Volcani Center, Insitute of Soil, Water and Environmental Sciences, Israel

Beate Liepert

Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, Palisades, New York, USA

Gerald Stanhill

Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, Palisades, New York, USA

Abstract

Thirty years ago, scientists from the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and the National Physical Laboratory, Jerusalem reported “severe changes over the years in solar radiation” and issued a call for “a careful study of incoming radiation at different places throughout the world...to determine the exact kind, order of magnitude and their causes...”. The “severe changes” referred to emerged from the measurements at the site of the Smithsonian Institution's former solar radiation monitoring station on Mount St. Katherine in the southern Sinai peninsula (28°31' N, 33°56'E, 2643 m altitude). Measurements using modern radiometers as well as some of the original instruments used between 1933 and 1937 showed a 12% loss in global radiation during the intervening four-decade interval.

Published 21 September 2004.

Index Terms: 1610 Global Change: Atmosphere (0315, 0325); 3359 Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics: Radiative processes; 9950 Meetings.

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Citation: Cohen, S., B. Liepert, and G. Stanhill (2004), Global Dimming Comes of Age, Eos Trans. AGU, 85(38), doi:10.1029/2004EO380004.

Copyright 2004 by the American Geophysical Union.