Atmospheric Aerosol and Ultraviolet Radiation
Ultraviolet (UV) radiation plays very important role in bio-geo-chemical cycle. Their harmful effects include skin cancer, cataract, immune suppression, reduction in crop yield, etc. Beneficial effects are synthesis of vitamin D in human body, treatment of psoriasis, etc ( Lucas et al., 2006 ). My interest in UV radiation is how it interacts with atmospheric aerosols. Aerosols are one of the many factors which determines amount of surface reaching UV radiation. While scattering type of aerosols may reduce surface reaching UV radiation, they increase the actinic flux which in turn increases the photolysis rate for smog formation ( Dickerson et al., 1997 ). Relation of aerosol and UV radiation is not one-way; while aerosols affect surface reaching UV radiation, they are affected by surface reaching UV radiation. This is particularly true for naturally produced sulfate aerosol. Recently scientific community has shown a lot of interest to study UV induced sulfate aerosol production to bet...