CMSAF products Cloud Fraction Coverage and Cloud Type used for solar global irradiance estimation

Abstract

Two products provided by the climate monitoring satellite application facility (CMSAF) are the instantaneous Cloud Fractional Coverage (iCFC) and the instantaneous Cloud Type (iCTY) products. Previous studies based on the iCFC product show that the simple solar radiation models belonging to the cloudiness index class n CFC = 0.1–1.0 have rRMSE values ranging between 68 and 71 %. The products iCFC and iCTY are used here to develop simple models providing hourly estimates for solar global irradiance. Measurements performed at five weather stations of Romania (South-Eastern Europe) are used. Two three-class characterizations of the state-of-the-sky, based on the iCTY product, are defined. In case of the first new sky state classification, which is roughly related with cloud altitude, the solar radiation models proposed here perform worst for the iCTY class 4–15, with rRMSE values ranging between 46 and 57 %. The spreading error of the simple models is lower than that of the MAGIC model for the iCTY classes 1–4 and 15–19, but larger for iCTY classes 4–15. In case of the second new sky state classification, which takes into account in a weighted manner the chance for the sun to be covered by different types of clouds, the solar radiation models proposed here perform worst for the cloudiness index class n CTY = 0.7–0.1, with rRMSE values ranging between 51 and 66 %. Therefore, the two new sky state classifications based on the iCTY product are useful in increasing the accuracy of solar radiation models.