SBIR-STTR Award

Since the discovery of the "ozone hole" the monitoring of long term trends and geographical variability of W irradiance and how it impacts our environment has become increasingly important. There is an immediate need to deploy networks of suitable instrumentation yet there appears to be no significant level of agreement that suitable and cost-effective alternative seven exist. This proposed effort will develop a the methodology required to establish and operate monitoring networks composed of instruments that are available, and thus are potentially ready for deployment. Inherent in this effort is the necessity to address critical quality control issues that must be met to satisfy the needs of the scientific community. The Phase 1 effort will concentrate on developing and demonstrating strategies for employing simple filter-based radiometers that have the potential of yielding a full suite of measurements of W-B impact as influenced by changes in ozone concentration and other parameters sensitive to global change such as cloud cover.Commercial Applications:The fact that ozone depletion is occurring is widely known by the general public and several federal agencies including NOAA, NASA, DOE, USDA, EPA are involved with understanding its impact. Most countries in mid- or high-latitudes are establishing or desire to establish monitoring networks, Unfortunately, no cost effective instrumentation (less than $50,000) have been widely acknowledged to be adequate for the task.

Since discovery of the "ozone hole", monitoring of longterm trends and geographical variability of UV irradiance and howit impacts our environment has became increasingly important. Acontinuing difficulty in judging these impacts is the lack ofcoordinated, world-wide W monitoring networks that produceresults that can be compared at the level of precision andaccuracy needed to detect trends in irradiance that may be or arelikely to be occurring.In Phase I we demonstrated that the GUV-511 radiometers arestable and able to determine the biologically-weighted UVirradiances of interest to the scientific community, and thatthey can be integrated into coordinated, automated networks. Wehave evidence that they can detect changes in ozone and cloudcover, crucial features in distinguishing varying changes in UV.In Phase II we will develop tools that wit allow these networksto continue to be operated in a coordinated manner with a fullset of quality control measures including field calibrationmethodologies linked to national laboratories that will enablethese networks to detect global trends in W irradiance and thatwill at ow results to be intercompared with other networks, bothnational and international.Potential commercial applications of the research:The fact thatozone depletion is occurring is widely known by the generalpublic. Several federal agencies are involved in programs rearedto understanding its impact. Most countries in mid- orhigh-latitudes are establishing or desire to establish monitoringnetworks. Unfortunately, no cost-effective instrumentation hasbeen widely acknowledged to be adequate for the task. We proposeto deliver a proven, cost-effective, internationally-based methodfor gauging the impact of changes in the ozone layer that meetsmany of the objections raised against using instruments costing less than $50,000.