Light pollution and the concentration of anthropogenic photons in the terrestrial atmosphere

Abstract

Light pollution can be rigorously described in terms of the volume concentration of anthropogenic photons (light quanta) in the terrestrial atmosphere. This formulation, consistent with the basic physics of the emission, scattering and absorption of light, allows one to express light pollution levels in terms of particle volume concentrations, in a completely analogous way as it is currently done with other classical pollutants, like particulate matter or molecular contaminants. In this work we provide the explicit conversion equations between the photon volume concentration and the traditional light photometry quantities. This equivalent description of the light pollution levels provides some relevant insights that help to identify artificial light at night as a standard pollutant. It also enables a complementary way of expressing artificial light exposures for environmental and public health research and regulatory purposes.

arXiv comment15 pages, 2 figures. This is an author-formatted version of the accepted manuscript whose version of record has been published in Atmospheric Pollution Research, 2022, 13(9):101541, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apr.2022.101541

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Cited by in corpus (2)

• Artificial light at night: a global disruptor of the night-time environment
• A call for scientists to halt the spoiling of the night sky with artificial light and satellites