In summer, especially under clouds with a low base height, the transmittance over the central part of the fjord is close to the oceanic values. Effects of single or multiple reflections between the surface and the clouds are strongly reduced in the infrared. For λ = 1640 nm, they are negligible. The
simulations showed that the reflection between the Earth’s surface and clouds results in considerable spatial variations in atmospheric transmittance (downward irradiance) at the surface in the Hornsund Selleckchem LDE225 region. Therefore, neither solar radiation measurements performed at the station nor measurements from the open ocean are representative of the fjord. In this paper we analysed the spectral radiative forcing CRFrel(λ) computed for selected spectral channels of the MODIS radiometer and expressed as a fraction of the TOA irradiance. Shortwave cloud radiative forcing at the Earth’s surface is negative. In general, spectral cloud radiative forcing for the fjord is quite different from CRF for the ocean under the same conditions. Also, a high spatial
variability within the fjord is observed. The expected difference between the fjord and the ocean is the greatest for clouds of τ = 12, a high cloud base, spring albedo pattern and a high solar zenith angle. Spectral radiative forcing CRFdailyrel(λ = 469 nm) calculated from daily mean irradiances for a cloud of τ = 12 lying 1 km above the sea surface (λ = 469 nm) is − 0.396 for the open ocean and − 0.370 for the whole fjord. For other plots (shore adjacent areas) the magnitude of CRFdailyrel (λ = 469 nm) is up Venetoclax to 0.1 lower than it is for the ocean. This is caused by the much higher Ed at the fjord under cloudy conditions than Ed for the open ocean. The largest difference was found for the inner fjords.
The magnitude of CRFrel(λ = 469 nm) for the fjord is the highest for thick clouds with low base. For clouds of low base, h = 200 m, and τ = 12 the magnitude of the radiative forcing for the fjord is by 0.017 higher than PTK6 it is for the ocean (λ = 469 nm, spring albedo pattern, ϑ = 53°, α = 180°). For h = 0.5–0.6 the difference is about 0. For the summer albedo pattern, the spatial variability in CRFrel(λ = 469 nm) is 60% of its value for spring (snow) conditions and CRFrel(λ = 469 nm) for the whole fjord is close to its ocean value (for τ = 12, ϑ = 53°, α = 180°, and h = 1 km, CRFrel(λ = 469 nm)fjord − CRFrel(λ = 469 nm)ocean = − 0.004). The anomaly in the surface irradiance due to the uniform surface assumption Δpps is the difference between the surface irradiance for the uniform or plane-parallel case and the slope-parallel irradiance for the actual non-uniform surface with the same mean values of the terrain elevation and the same mean surface albedo, averaged over a given area. In the present paper it is expressed as a fraction of the downward irradiance at the TOA.