Comment on essd-2022-319

Abstract

<strong class="journal-contentHeaderColor">Abstract.</strong> Surface downward shortwave radiation (DSR) and photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) play critical roles in the Earth's surface processes. As the main inputs of various ecological, hydrological, carbon, and solar photovoltaic models, increasing requirements for high-spatiotemporal-resolution DSR and PAR estimation with high accuracy have been observed in recent years. However, few existing products satisfy all of these requirements. This study employed a well-established physical-based lookup table (LUT) approach to the GeoNEX gridded top-of-atmosphere bidirectional reflectance factor data acquired by the Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI) and Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) sensors. It produced a data product of DSR and PAR over both AHI and ABI coverage at an hourly temporal step with a 1 km spatial resolution. GeoNEX DSR data were validated over 63 stations, and GeoNEX PAR data were validated over 27 stations. The validation showed that the new GeoNEX DSR and PAR products have accuracy higher than other existing products, with root mean square error (RMSE) of hourly GeoNEX DSR achieving 74.3 W m<span class="inline-formula">^−2</span> (18.0 %), daily DSR estimation achieving 18.0 W m<span class="inline-formula">^−2</span> (9.2 %), hourly GeoNEX PAR achieving 34.9 W m<span class="inline-formula">^−2</span> (19.6 %), and daily PAR achieving 9.5 W m<span class="inline-formula">^−2</span> (10.5 %). The study also demonstrated the application of the high-spatiotemporal-resolution GeoNEX DSR product in investigating the spatial heterogeneity and temporal variability of surface solar radiation. The data product can be freely accessed through the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division GeoNEX data portal: <span class="uri">https://data.nas.nasa.gov/geonex/geonexdata/GOES16/GEONEX-L2/DSR-PAR/</span> (last access: 12 March 2023) and <span class="uri">https://data.nas.nasa.gov/geonex/geonexdata/HIMAWARI8/GEONEX-L2/DSR-PAR/</span> (last access: 12 March 2023) (<a href="https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7023863">https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7023863</a>; Wang and Li, 2022).