EGU2020-2415
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-2415
EGU General Assembly 2020
© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

The global extent of artificial light pollution in the marine environment

Tim Smyth1, Thomas Davies2, and David McKee3
Tim Smyth et al.
  • 1Plymouth Marine Laboratory, Plymouth, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (tjsm@pml.ac.uk)
  • 2School of Biological and Marine Sciences, University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth, UK, PL4 8AA
  • 3Physics Department, University of Strathclyde, 107 Rottenrow, Glasgow, Scotland, G4 0NG

Coastlines globally are increasingly being illuminated with Artificial Light At Night (ALAN) from various urban infrastructures such as houses, offices, piers, roads, ports and dockyards. Artificial sky glow can now be detected above 22% of the world’s coasts nightly and will dramatically increase as coastal human populations more than double by the year 2060. One of the clearest demonstrations that we have entered another epoch, the urbanocene, is the prevalence of ALAN visible from space.

Photobiological life history adaptations to the moon and sun are near ubiquitous in the surface ocean (0-200m), such that cycles and gradients of light intensity and spectra are major structuring factors in marine ecosystems. The potential for ALAN to reshape the ecology of coastal habitats by interfering with natural light cycles and the biological processes they inform is increasingly recognized and is an emergent focus for research.

In this paper we derive a methodology to quantify and map the depths to which biologically relevant ALAN penetrates in the marine environment.  We use two satellite derived global datasets to achieve this: an artificial night sky brightness world atlas (Falchi et al., 2016) and an in-water Inherent Optical Property (Lee et al., 2002) dataset derived from ESA’s Ocean Colour Climate Change Initiative (OC-CCI https://www.oceancolour.org/).  These primary datasets are both used in conjunction with in-situ derived measurements and radiative transfer modelling in order to quantify the critical depth (Zc) to which biologically relevant ALAN penetrates throughout the global ocean’s estuarine, coastal and near shore regions, in particular the area defined by an individual country’s Exclusive Economic Zone. 

How to cite: Smyth, T., Davies, T., and McKee, D.: The global extent of artificial light pollution in the marine environment , EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-2415, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-2415, 2020

Displays

Display file