Biological dosimetry of solar radiation for different simulated ozone column thicknesses.

During the Spacelab mission D-2, in the experiment RD-UVRAD, precalibrated biofilms consisting of dry monolayers of immobilised spores of Bacillus subtilis (strain Marburg) were exposed, for defined intervals, to extraterrestrial solar radiation filtered through an optical filtering system, to simulate different ozone column thicknesses. After the mission, the biofilms were processed and optical densities indicative of any biological activity were determined for each exposure condition by image analysis. For the different simulated ozone column thicknesses, biologically effective irradiances were experimentally determined from the biofilm data and compared with calculated data using a radiative transfer model and the known biofilm action spectrum. The data show a strong increase in biologically effective solar UV irradiance with decreasing (simulated) ozone concentrations. The full spectrum of extraterrestrial solar radiation leads to an increment of the biologically effective irradiance by nearly three orders of magnitude compared with the solar spectrum at the surface of the Earth for average total ozone columns.