Worldwide variations in artificial skyglow.

Despite constituting a widespread and significant environmental change, understanding of artificial nighttime skyglow is extremely limited. Until now, published monitoring studies have been local or regional in scope, and typically of short duration. In this first major international compilation of monitoring data we answer several key questions about skyglow properties. Skyglow is observed to vary over four orders of magnitude, a range hundreds of times larger than was the case before artificial light. Nearly all of the study sites were polluted by artificial light. A non-linear relationship is observed between the sky brightness on clear and overcast nights, with a change in behavior near the rural to urban landuse transition. Overcast skies ranged from a third darker to almost 18 times brighter than clear. Clear sky radiances estimated by the World Atlas of Artificial Night Sky Brightness were found to be overestimated by ~25%; our dataset will play an important role in the calibration and ground truthing of future skyglow models. Most of the brightly lit sites darkened as the night progressed, typically by ~5% per hour. The great variation in skyglow radiance observed from site-to-site and with changing meteorological conditions underlines the need for a long-term international monitoring program.

Temperature stability of the sky quality meter.

The stability of radiance measurements taken by the Sky Quality Meter (SQM)was tested under rapidly changing temperature conditions during exposure to a stable light field in the laboratory. The reported radiance was found to be negatively correlated with temperature, but remained within 7% of the initial reported radiance over a temperature range of -15 °C to 35 °C, and during temperature changes of -33 °C/h and +70 °C/h.This is smaller than the manufacturer's quoted unit-to-unit systematic uncertainty of 10%,indicating that the temperature compensation of the SQM is adequate under expected outdoor operating conditions.

Citizen science provides valuable data for monitoring global night sky luminance.

The skyglow produced by artificial lights at night is one of the most dramatic anthropogenic modifications of Earth's biosphere. The GLOBE at Night citizen science project allows individual observers to quantify skyglow using star maps showing different levels of light pollution. We show that aggregated GLOBE at Night data depend strongly on artificial skyglow, and could be used to track lighting changes worldwide. Naked eye time series can be expected to be very stable, due to the slow pace of human eye evolution. The standard deviation of an individual GLOBE at Night observation is found to be 1.2 stellar magnitudes. Zenith skyglow estimates from the "First World Atlas of Artificial Night Sky Brightness" are tested using a subset of the GLOBE at Night data. Although we find the World Atlas overestimates sky brightness in the very center of large cities, its predictions for Milky Way visibility are accurate.

Cloud coverage acts as an amplifier for ecological light pollution in urban ecosystems.

The diurnal cycle of light and dark is one of the strongest environmental factors for life on Earth. Many species in both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems use the level of ambient light to regulate their metabolism, growth, and behavior. The sky glow caused by artificial lighting from urban areas disrupts this natural cycle, and has been shown to impact the behavior of organisms, even many kilometers away from the light sources. It could be hypothesized that factors that increase the luminance of the sky amplify the degree of this "ecological light pollution". We show that cloud coverage dramatically amplifies the sky luminance, by a factor of 10.1 for one location inside of Berlin and by a factor of 2.8 at 32 km from the city center. We also show that inside of the city overcast nights are brighter than clear rural moonlit nights, by a factor of 4.1. These results have important implications for choronobiological and chronoecological studies in urban areas, where this amplification effect has previously not been considered.

Method for retrieving the polarization properties of a waveplate assembled in a multispectral, complete polarimeter.

A robust method for the optical characterization of polarimeter optics for a complete, multispectral polarimeter is presented. The polarimeter optics consists of a waveplate, a polarizing filter, and a multispectral detector. The method employs a source of unpolarized light and a rotating polarizing filter and retrieves the retardance and the angle of the waveplate. Three independent measurements at distinct angles of the analyzer are used at a time, and an arbitrary number of distinct measurement triples can be used to ensure the consistency of the results. The elements of the polarimeter optics must not be moved during the measurement, and therefore the method allows one to adjust the setup to defined and potentially optimized values for the retrieved properties. This key element of the method was a crucial feature for the design of the Airborne Multi-Spectral Sunphoto Polarimeter (AMSSP) for the German research aircraft HALO. The application of the method to a single optic of the AMSSP instrument is presented. The variation of the independently retrieved parameters is then used to estimate the maximum uncertainty of the results due to systematic errors.

Optimization of system parameters for a complete multispectral polarimeter.

We optimize a general class of complete multispectral polarimeters with respect to signal-to-noise ratio, stability against alignment errors, and the minimization of errors regarding a given set of polarization states. The class of polarimeters that are dealt with consists of at least four polarization optics each with a multispectral detector. A polarization optic is made of an azimuthal oriented wave plate and a polarizing filter. A general, but not unique, analytic solution that minimizes signal-to-noise ratio is introduced for a polarimeter that incorporates four simultaneous measurements with four independent optics. The optics consist of four sufficient wave plates, where at least one is a quarter-wave plate. The solution is stable with respect to the retardance of the quarter-wave plate; therefore, it can be applied to real-world cases where the retardance deviates from lambda/4. The solution is a set of seven rotational parameters that depends on the given retardances of the wave plates. It can be applied to a broad range of real world cases. A numerical method for the optimization of arbitrary polarimeters of the type discussed is also presented and applied for two cases. First, the class of polarimeters that were analytically dealt with are further optimized with respect to stability and error performance with respect to linear polarized states. Then a multispectral case for a polarimeter that consists of four optics with real achromatic wave plates is presented. This case was used as the theoretical background for the development of the Airborne Multi-Spectral Sunphoto- and Polarimeter (AMSSP), which is an instrument for the German research aircraft HALO.

Dual-aureole and sun spectrometer system for airborne measurements of aerosol optical properties.

We have designed an airborne spectrometer system for the simultaneous measurement of the direct sun irradiance and the aureole radiance in two different solid angles. The high-resolution spectral radiation measurements are used to derive vertical profiles of aerosol optical properties. Combined measurements in two solid angles provide better information about the aerosol type without additional and elaborate measuring geometries. It is even possible to discriminate between absorbing and nonabsorbing aerosol types. Furthermore, they allow to apply additional calibration methods and simplify the detection of contaminated data (e.g., by thin cirrus clouds). For the characterization of the detected aerosol type a new index is introduced that is the slope of the aerosol phase function in the forward scattering region. The instrumentation is a flexible modular setup, which has already been successfully applied in airborne and ground-based field campaigns. We describe the setup as well as the calibration of the instrument. In addition, example vertical profiles of aerosol optical properties--including the aureole measurements--are shown and discussed.

Effect of aerosol microphysical properties on polarization of skylight: sensitivity study and measurements.

We analyze the sensitivity of the degree of linear polarization in the Sun's principal plane as a function of aerosol microphysical parameters: the real and imaginary parts of the refractive index, the median radius and geometric standard deviation of the bimodal size distribution (both fine and coarse modes), and the relative number weight of the fine mode at a wavelength of 675 nm. We use Mie theory for single-scattering simulations and the doubling-adding method with the inclusion of polarization for multiple scattering. It is shown that the behavior of the degree of linear polarization is highly sensitive to both the small mode of the bimodal size distribution and the real part of the refractive index of aerosols, as well as to the aerosol optical thickness; whereas not all parameters influence the polarization equally. A classification of the importance of the input parameters is given. This sensitivity study is applied to an analysis of ground-based polarization measurements. For the passive remote sensing of microphysical and optical properties of aerosols, a ground-based spectral polarization measuring system was built, which aims to measure the Stokes parameters I, Q, and U in the visible (from 410 to 789 nm) and near-infrared (from 674 to 995 nm) spectral range with a spectral resolution of 7 nm in the visible and 2.4 nm in the near infrared. We compare polarization measurements taken with radiative transfer simulations under both clear- and hazy-sky conditions in an urban area (Cabauw, The Netherlands, 51.58 degrees N, 4.56 degrees E). Conclusions about the microphysical properties of aerosol are drawn from the comparison.

Sun and aureole spectrometer for airborne measurements to derive aerosol optical properties.

We have designed an airborne spectrometer system for the simultaneous measurement of the direct Sun irradiance and aureole radiance. The instrument is based on diffraction grating spectrometers with linear image sensors. It is robust, lightweight, compact, and reliable, characteristics that are important for airborne applications. The multispectral radiation measurements are used to derive optical properties of tropospheric aerosols. We extract the altitude dependence of the aerosol volume scattering function and of the aerosol optical depth by using flight patterns with descents and ascents ranging from the surface level to the top of the boundary layer. The extinction coefficient and the product of single scattering albedo and phase function of separate layers can be derived from the airborne measurements.