Modeling Atmospheric Turbidity at Zarqa Area Using Meteorological Data

Clearness index (k) and atmospheric turbidity over Zarqa have been calculated using solar data obtained by a GS1 Dome Solarimeter for the period from 25th of June 2001 to 18th of May 2002. The clearness index found to be highly scattered and never exceeded 0.8. Several attempts were made in order to find a correlation between the clearness index and turbidity with measurable meteorological parameters such as air temperature, relative humidity, and atmospheric pressure. No correlations were found. However, when the clearness index was plotted against the daily temperature range (ΔT), an exponential trend that is best described by the formula k=0.13(ΔT)0.52 was found. This result enabled us to modify traditional formula used in obtaining atmospheric turbidity through replacing the clearness index part by 0.13(ΔT)0.52 in order to provide a mean to calculate atmospheric turbidity based on the daily temperature range