Terrestrial atmospheric responses on Svalbard to the 20 March 2015 Arctic total solar eclipse under extreme conditions

• Published in: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences
• Main Authors: Pasachoff, J. M., Peñaloza-Murillo, M. A., Carter, A. L., Roman, M. T.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Royal Society of London 2016
• Subjects: solar system; atmospheric science; climatology; Arctic; Longyearbyen; Svalbard
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2016.0188; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/PMC5004056

This article reports on the near-surface atmospheric response at the High Arctic site of Svalbard, latitude 78° N, as a result of abrupt changes in solar insolation during the 20 March 2015 equinox total solar eclipse and notifies the atmospheric science community of the availability of a rare dataset. Svalbard was central in the path of totality, and had completely clear skies. Measurements of shaded air temperature and atmospheric pressure show only weak, if any, responses to the reduced insolation. A minimum in the air temperature at 1.5 m above the ground occurred starting 2 min following the end of totality, though this drop was only slightly beyond the observed variability for the midday period. Eclipse-produced variations in surface pressure, if present, were less than 0.3 hPa. © 2016 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. This article is part of the themed issue 'Atmospheric effects of solar eclipses stimulated by the 2015 UK eclipse'. Accepted: 2 June 2016. We thank Eric Seiler of our expedition for his manual readouts of temperature and Mika Hirai of Williams College's Office of Information Technology for her graphing skills. We thank Jane S. Gasper of Onset Computer Corporation ([e-mail]) for the loan of a HOBO datalogger and Jay Racela of the Geosciences Department of Williams College for equipment, advice and instruction. We thank Pål Brekke ([e-mail]) of the Norwegian Space Center, Longyearbyen, for advice about observing sites on Svalbard. J.M.P. thanks Prof. Andrew Ingersoll and the Planetary Sciences Department of the Division of Geophysical and Planetary Sciences of Caltech for sabbatical hospitality. We are grateful for the logistic arrangements of Mark Sood (A Classic Tours Collection).