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Journal Article

Recovering the city street lighting fraction from skyglow measurements in a large-scale municipal dimming experiment

Authors

Barentine,  John C.
External Organizations;

Kundracik,  František
External Organizations;

Kocifaj,  Miroslav
External Organizations;

Sanders,  Jessie C.
External Organizations;

Esquerdo,  Gilbert A.
External Organizations;

Dalton,  Adam M.
External Organizations;

Foott,  Bettymaya
External Organizations;

Grauer,  Albert
External Organizations;

Tucker,  Scott
External Organizations;

/persons/resource/kyba

Kyba,  C.
1.4 Remote Sensing, 1.0 Geodesy, Departments, GFZ Publication Database, Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum;

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5002292.pdf
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Citation

Barentine, J. C., Kundracik, F., Kocifaj, M., Sanders, J. C., Esquerdo, G. A., Dalton, A. M., Foott, B., Grauer, A., Tucker, S., Kyba, C. (2020): Recovering the city street lighting fraction from skyglow measurements in a large-scale municipal dimming experiment. - Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer, 253, 107120.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jqsrt.2020.107120


Cite as: https://gfzpublic.gfz-potsdam.de/pubman/item/item_5002292
Abstract
Anthropogenic skyglow dominates views of the natural night sky in most urban settings, and the associated emission of artificial light at night (ALAN) into the environment of cities involves a number of known and suspected negative externalities. One approach to lowering consumption of ALAN in cities is dimming or extinguishing publicly owned outdoor lighting during overnight hours; however, there are few reports in the literature about the efficacy of these programs. Here we report the results of one of the largest municipal lighting dimming experiments to date, involving ~ 20,000 roadway luminaires owned and operated by the City of Tucson, Arizona, U.S. We analyzed both single-channel and spatially resolved ground-based measurements of broadband night sky radiance obtained during the tests, determining that the zenith sky brightness during the tests decreased by ()% near the city center and ()% at an adjacent suburban location on nights when the output of the street lighting system was dimmed from 90% of its full power draw to 30% after local midnight. Modeling these changes with a radiative transfer code yields results suggesting that street lights account for about (14 ± 1)% of light emissions resulting in skyglow seen over the city. A separate derivation from first principles implies that street lighting contributes only % of light seen at the zenith over Tucson. We discuss this inconsistency and suggest routes for future work.