Trend assessment of global, UVB, UVA irradiation, and dry bulb temperature at the lowest terrestrial site on earth: Dead Sea, Israel

The Dead Sea basin is lowest terrestrial site on the globe. A meteorological station monitoring the global, UVB and UVA irradiation and the dry bulb temperature was established in 1995 in conjunction with a study of bio-climatological properties of the region with regard to photoclimatherapy treatment of dermatological diseases. The availability of such irradiation and dry bulb temperature databases has been utilized to perform a study to determine if any trends regarding either irradiation or dry bulb temperature exist at this unique site. There was no indication of any trends, based upon a p-value analysis, regarding the global, UVB and UVA irradiation. The global irradiation database included the time interval 1995-2020; whereas the corresponding time interval for the UVB and UVA irradiation databases was 1995-2018. The dry bulb temperature database consisted of the time interval 1995-2020 and, once again, no trends were observed throughout the year with the exception of the nocturnal time interval, between 18:00 to 06:00, during the month of October which exhibited a warming trend of 0.78°C/decade