Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-atmospheric-physics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2014/paper-1/1/a/solution

Treat the quoted solar spectrum as irradiance normal to the beam, approximately constant over the narrow band. The incident band irradiance is and the horizontal value is . The cloud's vertical optical depth is ; including the clear atmosphere gives . The slant optical depth is . Thus the Beer-Lambert law gives
The removed fraction is , almost the full incident horizontal . Beam-normal surface irradiance is twice the horizontal value. These are direct-beam quantities, not the total diffuse-plus-direct surface flux. If the supplied irradiance were already horizontal, the projection factor would instead be omitted.

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