Man'kovsky V.I., Solov'ev M.V., Vladimirov V.L.
Variability in hydrooptical features of the Black Sea (1922-1992). - Oceanology. 1996, v.36, 3, p.339-345.

Abstract

The results of analytical treatment are presented of a 70-years series of observations of the Secchi disk visibility in the Black Sea, stored in the archives of the Marine Hydrophysical Institute of the Ukrainian Academy of Science. The climatic spatial distribution of relative transparency is compared to distributions in 1984, 1991, and 1992. It is shown that water transparency had decreased by 30% by the mid-1980s, and that there was a disastrous threefold drop in water transparency by 1992. By the comparison of spectral distributions of light attenuation coefficient, a shift in the attenuation minimum from 490 nm towards greater wavelengths of 550-570 nm is revealed. Thus, the water color has been changed from blue-green to yellow-green. The purity of water color has also strongly reduced, according to calculations on spectral distributions of the radiance reflectance of the sea surface.

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