Abstract

To casual observers, haze’s visible effects on clear daytime skies may seem mundane: significant scattering by tropospheric aerosols visibly (1) reduces the luminance contrast of distant objects and (2) desaturates sky blueness. However, few published measurements of hazy-sky spectra and chromaticities exist to compare with these naked-eye observations. Hyperspectral imaging along sky meridians of clear and hazy skies at one inland and two coastal sites shows that they have characteristic colorimetric signatures of scattering and absorption by haze aerosols. In addition, a simple spectral transfer function and a second-order scattering model of skylight reveal the net spectral and colorimetric effects of haze.

© 2015 Optical Society of America

Tropospheric haze and colors of the clear twilight sky

Raymond L. Lee and Duncan C. Mollner
Appl. Opt. 56(19) G179-G187 (2017)

Twilight and daytime colors of the clear sky

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Colors of the daytime overcast sky

Raymond L. Lee and Javier Hernández-Andrés
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Spectral polarization of clear and hazy coastal skies

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Atmospheric ozone and colors of the Antarctic twilight sky

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