Aerosol impact on light pollution in cities and their environment

Wallner, Stefan; Kocifaj, Miroslav

doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2023.117534

Cited by 9 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 69 publications

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“…Aerosol optical properties typically vary from case to case (Wallner & Kocifaj, 2023). The baseline conditions assumed here consist of exemplary specific aerosol properties.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detailed Assessment of Multiple‐Scattering Effects on Night‐Sky Brightness Modeling in Turbid Environments: The Impact of Truncation and Convergence Errors

Kocifaj,

Wallner,

Gueymard

2024

JGR Atmospheres

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Detailed modeling of the night‐sky brightness (NSB) is needed to pinpoint environmental impacts caused by artificial light at night. This becomes progressively more intricate with longer distances to emission sources or under high atmospheric turbidity. In such cases, the multiple‐scattering processes that affect light propagation become increasingly critical. To detect and quantify the potential errors caused by popular approximations like single or double scattering in current models, a rigorous multiple‐scattering model is used here. It integrates an advanced method of resolution based on the successive orders of scattering that can provide analytical “exact” solutions. With this tool, it is found that simplistic approaches lead to numerical predictions violating physics principles, resulting in incorrect outcomes that can have profound implications in a large variety of research areas. To avoid this, it is proposed to force the convergence of the modeled radiance to its true value through a carefully controlled process, by which the contribution from the remaining higher‐scattering terms to the modeled radiative property is kept below the specified error tolerance. For green light, it is found that, for a turbid atmosphere with an aerosol optical depth larger than 0.3 and an asymmetry parameter exceeding 0.7, four scattering orders are needed to compute the zenith radiance 60‐km away from the light source within an experimental error tolerance of 10%.

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“…Aerosol optical properties typically vary from case to case (Wallner & Kocifaj, 2023). The baseline conditions assumed here consist of exemplary specific aerosol properties.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detailed Assessment of Multiple‐Scattering Effects on Night‐Sky Brightness Modeling in Turbid Environments: The Impact of Truncation and Convergence Errors

Kocifaj,

Wallner,

Gueymard

2024

JGR Atmospheres

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“…Under clear-sky conditions, atmospheric turbidity is by far the most important parameter governing the temporal variability of the NSB (Kocifaj & Barentine 2021 ). The essential elements needed to estimate the sphere of influence of ground-based light sources include, at least, the aerosol optical depth (AOD) and the aerosol asymmetry parameter ( g ) (Aub é 2015 ; Wallner & Kocifaj 2023 ;Bar á, Rigueiro & Lima 2019 ). When combined with the optical depths of atmospheric gases, AOD predetermines the optical attenuation of light beams traversing the cloud-free atmosphere.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aerosol parameters for night sky brightness modeling estimated from daytime sky images

Kocifaj

Kundracík

Barentine³

2023

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Atmospheric turbidity is one of key factors influencing the propagation of artificial light into environment during cloudless nights. High aerosol loading can reduce the visibility of astronomical objects, thus the information on atmospheric pollution is critical for prediction of night sky brightness (NSB) distribution. In particular, the aerosol optical depth (AOD) and asymmetry parameter (g) are among the most important aerosol properties influencing the NSB amplitudes. However, both are rarely available at astronomical sites. Here, we develop the method for AOD and g retrievals from clear-sky radiometry carried out around sunset or sunrise, shortly before or after nighttime observation is intended. The method allows for reducing the number of unknowns needed in processing and interpretation of night sky radiances, thus providing an efficient tool for gathering input data to present skyglow simulators. The practice of collecting information about aerosols this way could become a routine part of astronomical observations, much like observing standard stars to get extinction coefficients. If conducted around sunset and the data were quickly reduced, it could offer an on-the-spot estimate of the night sky brightness during the night ahead. The error analysis is performed using the theoretical model, while taking into account experimental errors of radiance readings. The capability of the method is demonstrated in a field experiment conducted under cloudless conditions.

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Transport characteristics of urban and rural aerosols based on vertical observations and deep learning predictions

Zou,

Xing,

Xue

et al. 2025

Atmospheric Research

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Aerosol impact on light pollution in cities and their environment

Cited by 9 publications

References 69 publications

Detailed Assessment of Multiple‐Scattering Effects on Night‐Sky Brightness Modeling in Turbid Environments: The Impact of Truncation and Convergence Errors

Detailed Assessment of Multiple‐Scattering Effects on Night‐Sky Brightness Modeling in Turbid Environments: The Impact of Truncation and Convergence Errors

Aerosol parameters for night sky brightness modeling estimated from daytime sky images

Transport characteristics of urban and rural aerosols based on vertical observations and deep learning predictions

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