EPIC Observed Reduction of Spectral Radiance Reflectance during the Annular Solar Eclipse of 21 June 2020

Abstract:

An annular solar eclipse occurred on June 21, 2020 and the center path of the eclipse passed through desert areas (parts of Central and Eastern Africa, the southern Arabian Peninsula), partly cloudy regions (parts of South Asia and the Himalayas), and mostly cloudy region in East Asia. Moving around the L1 point, the EPIC (Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera) instrument on the DSCOVR (Deep Space Climate Observatory) satellite is able to see the Moon’s shadow in the image of sunlit Earth, allowing us to study the impact of solar eclipse on reflected solar radiation. The EPIC captured three snapshot images of sunlit Earth when the center of the eclipse was in different surface and atmosphere conditions during the eclipse. We found that EPIC observed global average spectral as well as spectrally integrated reflectance reductions during the annular solar eclipse are smaller than those during the total solar eclipse of 21 August 2017. We found that the reduction of spectral reflectance depends on underlying surface properties and cloud fraction. We compared the reduction of spectral reflectance during June 2020 eclipse with the August 2017 eclipse observed in US but with very different surface reflective properties.