Reply on RC2

Abstract

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 look-up 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 / m2 (18.0 %), daily DSR estimation achieving 18.0 W / m2 (9.2 %), hourly GeoNEX PAR achieving 34.9 W / m2 (19.6 %), and daily PAR achieving 9.5 W / m2 (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 accessed through NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division GeoNEX data portal https://data.nas.nasa.gov/geonex/geonexdata/GOES16/GEONEX-L2/DSR-PAR/ and https://data.nas.nasa.gov/geonex/geonexdata/HIMAWARI8/GEONEX-L2/DSR-PAR/ (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7023863, Wang & Li, 2022).