Experimental Verification of the Determination of Atmospheric Turbidity from Sunshine Recorders

Abstract

The feasibility of determining atmospheric turbidity from the burned traces of Campbell-Stokes sunshine recorders during cloudless sunsets and sunrises is examined experimentally. Results show that atmospheric turbidity can be determined in this way and can provide data for climatological research over the period of existing sunshine records. However, the measurements show a substantial uncertainty in the results if the properties of the used record cards are unknown. For networks of recorders, the method remains useful despite these limitations.