Computational Fluid Dynamics Analysis on Radiation Error of Surface Air Temperature Measurement

Abstract

Due to solar radiation effect, current air temperature sensors inside a naturally ventilated radiation shield may produce a measurement error that is 0.8 K or higher. To improve air temperature observation accuracy and correct historical temperature of weather stations, a radiation error correction method is proposed. The correction method is based on a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method and a genetic algorithm (GA) method. The CFD method is implemented to obtain the radiation error of the naturally ventilated radiation shield under various environmental conditions. Then, a radiation error correction equation is obtained by fitting the CFD results using the GA method. To verify the performance of the correction equation, the naturally ventilated radiation shield and an aspirated temperature measurement platform are characterized in the same environment to conduct the intercomparison. The aspirated temperature measurement platform serves as an air temperature reference. The mean radiation error given by the intercomparison experiments is 0.23 K, and the mean radiation error given by the correction equation is 0.2 K. This radiation error correction method allows the radiation error to be reduced by approximately 87 %. The mean absolute error and the root mean square error between the radiation errors given by the correction equation and the radiation errors given by the experiments are 0.036 K and 0.045 K, respectively.