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Effects of cloud and humidity on atmospheric extinction coefficient derived from visual range observations in Iranian major airports

Visibility impairment, one of the restricting phenomena for aviation, results from light scattering and absorption. In this study, the historical visibility database for the period of 1981–2010 is used to obtain extinction coefficient according to the Koschmieder theory in the four busiest airports in Iran, including Tehran‐Mehrabad, Mashhad, Shiraz and Isfahan. The long‐term trend of extinction coefficient and its seasonal variations are investigated using 10th and 90th percentiles of extinction data to show the visual range in each airport. Correlation of the long‐term visibility trend with relative humidity (RH) and cloudiness is also examined. The comparison of seasonal mean extinctions shows the noticeable effect of local climate. The highest extinction coefficient value in each airport is seen during winter, while the lowest value occurs in summer. The seasonal mean extinction coefficient level in winter is about 0.1 km−1 higher than those of the other seasons. This is likely due to pollutants trapped by the stagnant cold air that partly obstruct visibility and increase the extinction in wintertime. There is not an outstanding variation of the tenth percentile of the extinction coefficient in the four airports. The low variation may relate to the definition of the upper threshold in visibility. Analysis shows that there is a positive correlation between extinction and humidity in all the airports that indicates the increase of scattering by hygroscopic particles with increasing humidity, such effect would be accentuated in high RH. The same result is seen for different percentages of cloudiness. To minimize the effects of humidity and cloudiness on the long‐term visibility trend, the days with the relative humidity values more than 70% and cloudiness of more than 5/8 of the sky are removed from the visibility trend analysis. The trends of the screened days are nearly parallel to the trends of raw data, but with a slight difference in each airport. The overall filtered long‐term trends show the increase of extinction coefficient at all the airports that emphasize the effect of pollution on the trend of light extinction within the whole period of this study. Eliminating the meteorological factors from the raw data does not change the overall increasing trend of extinction at Tehran and Isfahan airports. It suggests that the changes in air quality are responsible for the long‐term visibility degradation at these two stations that are located in the two most highly industrialized and polluted cities in Iran.