August 11, 1999 solar eclipse over Turkey and associated effects

Turkey was one of the perfect sites to watch the total solar eclipse in August 11, 1999. The total eclipse was observed across a diagonal path extending from Bartin (41.63degN, 32.33degE) on the Black Sea coast to Diyarbakir (37.55degN, 40.14degE) in southeastern Turkey. The weather was cloudless and therefore the eclipse effects were expected to be clearly observable and attributable to the eclipse event. The effect of the solar eclipse progresses from the upper atmosphere downward. As the moon moves thorough the Sun, a shock wave is created in the upper atmosphere and transmitted downward which can be detected in the pressure variations on the surface. The cooling effect of the total eclipse is observable in the temperature and humidity records. It has been suggested that the total eclipse can create a local anticyclonic (clockwise) rotation of the surface winds within the totality region and the strength of the wind is seen to decrease. In this study, we present the observations of temperature and wind recorded over two stations on the totality path and investigate some of these eclipse related effects and compare our finding with those of earlier studies. The advantage of this study is that both stations within the area of 100% totality and exhibit cloudless skies during the eclipse totality.