Multiannual changes in atmospheric column transparency based on measurements of direct solar radiation allow us to assess various tendencies in climatic changes. Variability of the atmospheric integral (broadband) transparency coefficient, calculated according to the Bouguer‐Lambert law and transformed to a solar elevation of 30°, is used for two Russian locations, Pavlovsk and Moscow, one Ukrainian location, Feodosiya, and three Estonian locations, Tartu, Tõravere, and Tiirikoja, covering together a 102‐year period, 1906–2007. The comparison of time series revealed significant parallelism. Multiannual trends demonstrate decrease in transparency during the postwar period until 1983/1984. The trend ends with a steep decline of transparency after a series of four volcanic eruptions of Soufriere (1979), Saint Helens (1980), Alaid (1981), and El Chichón (1982). From 1984/1985 to 1990 the atmosphere remarkably restored its clarity, which almost reached again the level of the 1960s. Following the eruption of Mount Pinatubo (June 1991), there was the most significant reduction in column transparency of the postwar period. However, from the end of 1990s, the atmosphere in all considered locations is characterized with high values of transparency. The clearing of the atmosphere (from 1993) evidently indicates a decrease in the content of aerosol particles and, besides the decline of volcanic activity, may therefore be also traced to environmentally oriented changes in technology (pollution prevention), to general industrial and agricultural decline in the territory of the former USSR and Eastern Europe after deep political changes in 1991, and in part to migration of some industries out of Europe.

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The concept behind the shortcut idea is a close correlation between column broadband aerosol optical depth (BAOD) and aerosol optical depth at 500 nm (AOD500). The method uses only two input parameters: (a) the Bouguer broadband coefficient of column transparency for optical mass m = 2 (solar elevation about 30°) and (b) integrated column precipitable water vapour which can be roughly estimated using surface water vapour pressure. In creating the method, a large database, including almost 20 000 complex, spectral and broadband direct solar beam observations at Tõravere, Estonia, during all seasons of a 8-year period, 2002-2009, was used. The AOD500 observations were performed by the NASA project AERONET and the broadband direct beam ones by the Estonian Meteorological and Hydrological Institute. Analysis of this database revealed a high correlation between BAOD and AOD500 which enabled transition from broadband to spectral AOD. Almost 82% of the observations in the database belonged to lower turbidities when AOD500 < 0.2. The root mean square deviation (RMSD) for AOD500 prediction in this range was 0.022. For AOD500 = 0.2-0.4, the RMSD was 0.035, for 0.4-0.6, the RMSD was 0.042. Relative RMSD for these ranges was about 22%, 12%, and 9%, respectively. For AOD500 > 0.6, relative RMSD remained 9%. For comparison, the same database was used to test Gueymard's broadband parameterization based on his SMARTS2 classic model. The last one, apparently due to problems with circumsolar radiation, slightly but systematically underestimated the AOD500. However, there was a close correlation between our shortcut results and Gueymard's broadband parameterization.

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