Overview of solar eclipse of 21st June 2020 and its impact on solar irradiance, surface ozone and different meteorological parameters over eight cities of India
Introduction
The phenomena like solar eclipse have always been very interesting to different researchers to assess their impact on our surroundings (Gogosheva et al., 2002, Tzanis, 2005, Varotsos, 2002, Varotsos, 2004, Varotsos et al., 2005, Tzanis et al., 2008, Peñaloza-Murillo and Pasachoff, 2018). It is found that in a total solar eclipse event the value of solar irradiance decreases to zero whereas in a partial solar eclipse it does not decrease to zero (Aplin et al., 2016). Although a solar eclipse is primarily of astronomical interest, meteorological changes also result from the abrupt change in isolation, causing cooling in the atmospheric surface layers (Aplin and Harrison, 2003). In many studies, transient changes in meteorological parameters (temperature, relative humidity and wind velocity) solar radiance and surface ozone have been reported (Eliot, 1990, Zerefos et al., 2007, Tzanis et al., 2008, Hanna, 2000, Hanna et al., 2016, Hanna, 2018, Subrahmanyam et al., 2013, Dolas et al., 2002). During the partial phases of solar eclipse relatively gradual change in the value of different meteorological parameters is observed but at the time of totality, the changes are quite rapid. Many researchers have reported the effect of the solar eclipse on earth's environment viz. variation in ozone, wind speed, relative humidity and short time disturbance in Solar irradiance and in consequence thermal balance of the atmosphere (Srivastava et al., 1982, Fernandez et al., 1993, Zerefos et al., 2001, Tzanis, 2005, Kolev et al., 2005; Gerasopoulos et al., 2008; Chakrabarty et al., 1997, Niranjan et al., 1997, Girach et al., 2012, Dutta et al., 1999, Naja and Lal, 1997). Eliot (1990) reported the observations of air temperature, barometric pressure, relative humidity, cloud and rainfall at all one hundred and fifty-four meteorological stations in India and solar radiation observations at six stations during the solar eclipse of January 22, 1898. He further reported that the air temperature diminished in proportion to the obscuration and the maximum reduction of temperature was 12 °C at Karwar and there was a steady increase of pressure proceeding at a nearly uniform rate during the eclipse. Chakrabarty et al. (1997) reported a sharp decrease in the ozone column from its normal value 15 min before the maximum obscuration of the Sun, followed by a sharp rise 10 min after the maximum obscuration during the solar eclipse of October 24, 1995 over Ahmedabad. A substantial decrease in ozone concentration is reported by Zerefos et al. (2001) at Thessaloniki, Greece during the solar eclipse event of 11 August 1999. Atmospheric ozone production is a photochemical phenomenon, ozone decreases because of lack of solar irradiation (during the eclipse event) in the UV range (Jain et al., 2020). Decrease in temperature during solar eclipse also causes reduction in ozone formation in the lower atmosphere (Zerefos et al., 2007, Reid et al., 1994, Chimonas and Hines, 1971). Tzanis et al. (2008) reported a reduction of solar irradiance up to 97% over Greece, Athens. They further reported an increase in relative humidity as well as decrease in wind velocity. Several other workers have also reported changes in different meteorological parameters during the solar eclipse period (e.g. Fernandez et al., 1993, Fernandez et al., 1996, Anderson, 1999, Aplin and Harrison, 2003, Krishnan et al., 2004). Krishnan et al. (2004) reported a decrease of 0.5 °C in temperature and decrease in wind speed also, while the variation in relative humidity was reported within the natural variability of the day during a total solar eclipse effect of August 11, 1999 over Ahmadabad, India.
Despite various studies of the solar eclipse effect on solar irradiance, surface ozone and meteorological parameters at individual places, a complete study of all the above parameters simultaneous at different places having different magnitudes of a solar eclipse is lacking. To complete this gap, the present study has been initiated during the most recent annular solar eclipse of 21st June 2020 at eight different cities of India having different eclipse magnitudes.
The recent solar eclipse of 21st June 2020 provided us a unique opportunity to study changes in solar radiance, surface ozone and different meteorological parameters at different places in India. The annular solar eclipse was seen in the Indian states of Uttarakhand, Rajasthan and Haryana in the morning hours whereas partial solar eclipses were seen in the different other parts of the country. The eclipse magnitude ranged from 77.2% to 98.6% at different stations included in the present study. In the present work, we have selected different cities from the northern part of the country viz. Kurukshetra and Sirsa from Haryana state, Jaipur from Rajasthan, Amritsar and Jalandhar from Punjab, Varanasi from Uttar Pradesh, Chandigarh the union territory and Delhi the capital of India has been taken into consideration to study the environmental effects of the solar eclipse. An overview of variation in different meteorological parameters (temperature, relative humidity and wind speed) and also observed change in solar irradiance and ozone concentrations have been analyzed. The results obtained are compared with previously reported results during the solar eclipse in different parts of the world.
Section snippets
Description of the eclipse
The first solar eclipse of 2020 occurred on 21st June forming an annular ring. This annular solar eclipse started in Africa, crossed over to the Arabian Peninsula and then passed to Asian countries. The path of annularity was about 60 km wide and started from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, passing across the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea. It then passed over Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Pakistan, India, China and Taiwan to end in the Pacific Ocean. This
Solar irradiance
Fig. 3 represents the 15 min mean of Solar irradiance measurements at annular solar eclipse day along with average of seven days before, during and after the solar eclipse of 21st June 2020 at different stations (Amritsar, Chandigarh, Delhi, Jaipur, Jalandhar, Kurukshetra and Varanasi). Solar irradiance measurement for the Sirsa location was not available. A substantial reduction in solar radiance is evident during maximum obscuration at all places. A similar reduction in Solar irradiance was
Conclusion
The occurrence of the annular solar eclipse of 21st June 2020, one of the longest solar eclipses of the recent period has given us an opportunity to investigate its effect on various parameters simultaneously at eight different cities of India where overwhelming obscuration of the solar eclipse was seen. The different stations were located nearly perpendicular to the eclipse axis having an eclipse magnitude from 98.6 % to 77.2 % to provide a better impact on the investigation. The measurements
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgment
The authors would like to express their gratitude to the Central pollution control board (CPCB) for providing data for different stations: https://app.cpcbccr.com/ccr/#/caaqm-dashboard-all/caaqm-landing/data. All the data set used in the present section is freely available at the above web site. The work is partially supported by SERB, New Delhi for the CRG project (File No: CRG/2019/000573) and partially by the Institute of Imminence (IoE) Program (Scheme No: 6031) of BHU, Varanasi. We are
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