The erythemal clearness index for Valencia, Spain.

The values of three clearness indices have been measured for the city of Valencia: kt, the clearness index for the whole solar spectrum, ktUV the clearness index for the ultraviolet range, and the erythemal clearness index for the erythemal radiation ktUVER, corresponding to the solar radiation weighted by the erythemal action spectrum on human skin, normalized with respect to the solar constant corresponding to that spectrum. The measurements of ktUV reached values that were approximately 54% of that corresponding to kt, while those of ktUVER were much smaller. Some statistics of the erythemal clearness index have been calculated both for monthly as well as hourly means. The shape of the distribution in both cases was nearly normal, so standard deviation and variance were used to analyse the dispersion of the data. The ratio of the erythemal clearness index and the corresponding solar irradiance was also studied. When only the central hours of the day were considered the relation between the two was markedly linear, giving a correlation coefficient that reached 99%. Copyright © 2008 Royal Meteorological Society