Abstract
Abstract. In this paper, we demonstrate the benefit of using observations from Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) satellites in addition to in-situ measurements to improve the spatial resolution of solar radiation data over Belgium. This objective has been reached thanks to geostatistical methods able to merge heterogeneous data types. Two geostatistical merging methods are evaluated against the interpolation of ground-data only and the single use of satellite-derived information. It results from our analysis that merging both data sources provides the most accurate mapping of surface solar radiation over Belgium.
Highlights
Knowledge of the local solar radiation is essential for many applications, including design, planning and operation of solar energy systems, architectural design, crop growth models and evapotranspiration estimates
We consider surface incoming global short-wave radiation products derived from Meteosat Second Generation (MSG, Schmetz et al, 2002) in order to improve the spatial resolution of daily surface solar radiation data over Belgium
The Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium (RMIB) is currently performing measurements of global solar irradiance by means of CNR1 and CM11 pyranometers of Kipp & Zonen at 13 sites well-distributed over Belgium
Summary
Knowledge of the local solar radiation is essential for many applications, including design, planning and operation of solar energy systems, architectural design, crop growth models and evapotranspiration estimates. Mapping solar radiation by interpolation/extrapolation of measurements is possible but usually leads to large errors, except for dense networks (Zelenka et al, 1992; Hay, 1981, 1984; Hay and Hanson, 1985; WMO, 1981; Perez et al, 1997). Because several authors have shown the potentialities of the images of the Earth taken by polar-orbiting and geostationary satellites for mapping the global irradiation impinging on a horizontal surface at the ground level (e.g., Zelenka et al, 1992, 1999; Perez et al, 1997, 2002; Pinker et al, 1995), we evaluate in the present paper the benefit of using space-based observations as an additional information source when interpolating the ground measurements. We implemented two geostatistical methods able to merge heterogeneous data types (i.e., kriging with external drift and regression kriging) and evaluate these methods against mappings derived from a single source of data (i.e., either in-situ or satellite data)
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