Stratospheric ozone and ultraviolet radiation

With this web interface your will be able to interactively calculate the impact of the ozone layer on UV radiation at various levels in the atmosphere. You can change the total amount of ozone (as well as latitude and season) and see the resulting effect on the penetration of UV radiation in the atmosphere. The web interface will call a six-stream radiative transfer model for the Rayleigh scattering atmosphere [Logan et al., 1981] with your specified inputs, and then display the results.

This interface is still work in progress, so I would love to hear your suggestions ! (jaegle@atmos.washington.edu). I haven't tested it with internet explorer or early versions of netscape. So if you have any trouble, let me know, and I will try to make the interface browser independent.

QUICKSTART GUIDE

Here is a rapid guide to using the web interface. In General Options you can type in the total ozone column (in Dobson units) and choose the latitude and month. Plot Selection will allow to you choose the ranges of values to be displayed on the x-axis and the y-axis. Finally you can choose the altitudes you want to see displayed. For reference, dashed lines in the top plot correspond to the 'standard' UV penetration (with the default settings of 300 DU, 20 N, July). The bottom plot will display the difference in actinic flux relative to the standard case. For more information, see below.

GENERAL OPTIONS:
For each plot you can select the following:

1. Type in the total ozone column: This should be in Dobson Units (DU). Enter a number between 10 and 400 DU. A typical ozone column value is 300 DU. The program will rescale the standard ozone profile to match the total ozone column you enter. Note: You can click on the link which will appear in the plot window to view the resulting ozone profile.

2. Select a latitude from 60 S to 60 N.

3. Select a month. The calculated UV flux will be for the first of the selected month. For example, if you select January, the calculations will be made for January 1.

PLOT SELECTION:
1. Select a wavelength range between 150 and 500 nm. This allows you to zoom in on particular regions of interest.

2. Select the range of values to be plotted on the Y-axis. You have two possibilities.

Automatic selection of maximum and minimum value ranges (this is the default)
Manual selection: you choose a minumum and a maximum for each plot. For manually setting the value ranges you need to disable the Automatic option (click on the Automatic button). It is recommended that you select

Note: enter the value in scientific notation. For example, type in 1e16.

DISPLAY OPTIONS
You can choose the altitudes you want to display.

ACTION
Once all of the above options have been modified to your liking, click on PLOT to see the results.

The initial settings in the control panel are at 300 DU ozone column, 20 N latitude, for the month of July. This constitutes the 'standard' case. If you change any of these settings, the plot will overlay the results of this standard calculation on the top plot for reference. To get a more quantitative understanding of the effect of changes of ozone column, latitude, and season, the bottom plot will show the difference of the calculations with your inputs relative to the initial standard case.

Pressing EXIT will kill the plot control window.