Modeling the Global Solar Radiation Under Cloudy Sky Using Meteosat Second Generation High Resolution Visible Raw Data

Abstract

This paper presents an improved model for mapping both hourly and daily values of the global radiation reaching the earth’s surface from satellite data over Algeria. An empirical model with a large spectral band using Linke atmospheric turbidity was chosen to modeling the clear-sky global radiation. The extinction of the solar radiation (absorption plus scattering) is described by an exponential decay function of the cloud albedo and cloud index. To compute these two parameter, we resolve the sun-pixel-satellite radiative model equation using the following hypothesizes. The first one supposes the total transmittance of the atmospheric in the pixel-satellite direction as the ratio of the direct radiation in real sky to the same quantity in case of a very clean sky. The second one estimates that the noise energy reflected back towards the radiometer by molecules of gases in the upper levels of the atmosphere represents about 5 % of the energy measured by the radiometer. The model performance was validated for five radiometric stations across the country for three selected months in 2013 and satisfactory results were obtained and discussed.