Excessive exposure to solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation has damaging effects on life on Earth. High-energy short-wavelength ultraviolet B (UVB) is biologically effective, influencing a range of dermal processes, including the potentially beneficial production of vitamin D. In addition to the damaging effects of UVB, the longer wavelength and more abundant ultraviolet A (UVA) has been shown to be linked to an increased risk of skin cancer. To evaluate this risk requires the monitoring of the solar UVA globally on a time repetitive basis in order to provide an understanding of the environmental solar UVA irradiance and resulting exposures that humans may receive during their normal daily activities. Satellite-based platforms, with the appropriate validation against ground-based instrumentation, can provide global monitoring of the solar UVA environment. Two satellite platforms that currently provide data on the terrestrial UVA environment are the ozone monitoring instrument (OMI) and the global ozone monitoring experiment (GOME-2). The objectives of this review are to provide a summary of the OMI and GOME-2 satellite-based platforms for monitoring the terrestrial UVA environment and to compare the remotely sensed UVA data from these platforms to that from ground-based instrumentation.

The variation of the biologically damaging solar UV (UVBE) enhanced by clouds above that of clear sky UVBE has been investigated. This was undertaken for summer through to winter for SZA of 5 to 60° employing an integrated automatic cloud and spectral UV measurement system that recorded the solar UV spectra and the sky images at five minute intervals. The UVBE calculated with action spectra with higher relative effectiveness in the UVA produced the lower percentage of cloud enhanced cases. The DNA UVBE provided the highest percentage of cloud enhanced cases compared to the total number of UV scans with 2.2% cloud enhanced cases. As a comparison, the plant and fish melanoma UVBE provided the lowest percentage of cloud enhanced cases with 0.6 to 0.8% cloud enhanced cases. For the cases of cloud enhanced UVBE, the average ratio of the measured UVBE to calculated cloud free UVBE for the photokeratitis, cataracts, plant, generalized plant damage and fish melanoma action spectra was 1.21 to 1.25. In comparison, the highest value of 1.4 was for the DNA action spectrum.