The place on Earth that receives as much light as Venus in summer

he Highlands of the Atacama DesertIn northern Chile, it is the sunniest place on Earth and receives as much light as Venus, according to a study published in early July by the American Meteorological Society.

average height 4000 meters above sea level And its climate is cold and dry, the highlands are characterized by being an area with low concentrations of ozone, aerosols and flowing water. All this within a vast 1,600km desert known for being one of the driest non-polar places in the world.

On average, the Atacama receives about 308 watts of shortwave (daylight) radiation per square metre, approx. twice that of central Europe or the eastern United States.

but when Raul Cordero, a climatologist at the University of Groningen (Netherlands), and his team took radiation measurements from the Schjnantor plateau, where the Atacama Larga Millimeter Array – the world’s largest astronomical telescope project – periodically rose to 2177 watts per square meter. “It’s actually the radiation you’d get in the summer if you were on Venus,” Cordero said. Washington Post.

The reason for this phenomenon lies in clouds, which instead of softening sunlight and reflecting solar radiation back into space, as is usually the case, focuses the rays on the surface. This, which occurs during the South American monsoon, is called “forward scattering” and is most effective when scattered clouds form that only take up part of the sky.

At the same time, Cordero notes, the Southern Hemisphere is about 7% closer to the Sun during the summer and also contains fewer ozone particles than the Northern Hemisphere.