UV Index 🇮🇸Iceland

Iceland is a volcanic island in the North Atlantic stretching roughly between 63.4°N and 66.5°N, with its northern coast brushing the Arctic Circle. According to Wikipedia's Geography of Iceland, more than ten percent of the country is covered by glaciers, including Vatnajökull, Langjökull and Hofsjökull. The high latitude keeps the sun low on the horizon for most of the year, so direct solar elevation and ambient ultraviolet radiation reaching the surface are modest compared with mid-latitude Europe.

Iceland's defining UV feature is the interaction of snow, ice and a long summer day. The WHO notes that fresh snow can reflect up to about 80 percent of incoming UV, so on clear spring and early-summer days the effective dose on or beside a glacier or snowfield can be roughly 50 percent higher than the open-air value measured nearby. Around the summer solstice the sun barely sets, spreading UV exposure across an unusually long window, while the Icelandic Met Office (Veðurstofa Íslands) publishes a daily UV index forecast that, despite frequent low-pressure systems and cloud cover, regularly reaches moderate values inland.

Iceland sits at #191 of 191 in the WHO's global ambient-UV ranking with about 957 J/m² of average daily UV, around the 0th percentile worldwide.