Design and experimental study of an effective, low-cost, naturally ventilated radiation shield for monitoring surface air temperature

Abstract

Accurate near-surface air temperature is demanded for climate change research. To reduce the air temperature observation error, this paper presents a novel radiation shield. First, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method is applied to obtain an optimum design of the radiation shield. Next, the CFD method is used to obtain quantitative radiation errors. Then, a neural network model is used to obtain a radiation error correction equation. Finally, observation experiments are conducted to vertify the actual performance of the shield and the corresponding correction equation. Experimental results show that the mean radiation error of the shield proposed in this paper is approximately 0.04 °C. In addition, the comparison between the radiation errors provided by the experiments and the radiation errors given by the correction equation show that the mean absolute error (MAE) and the root mean square error (RMSE) are 0.012 °C and 0.015 °C, respectively. The radiation error of the radiation shield proposed in this paper may be 1–2 orders of magnitude lower than the radiation errors of the traditional instruments.