Cleaner air brings better views, more sunshine and warmer summer days in the Netherlands

Introduction. In the late 1980s Atsumu Ohmura and several others (e.g. Ohmura and Lang, 1989) discovered that the amount of solar radiation reaching the surface had decreased at many radiation measurement sites between 1960 and 1990. Near densely-populated areas and industries, 30% less solar radiation was reaching the ground in the 1980s than a few decades earlier (Wild, 2009). However, since the mid 1980s a significant increase in visibility has been noted in western Europe (e.g. Doyle and Dorling, 2002), and there are strong indications that a reduction in aerosol load from anthropogenic em... Mehr ...