Abstract
Abstract. Solar radiation is one of the most important factors affecting climate and environment, and its long-term variation is of much concern in climate change studies. In the light of the limited number of radiation stations with reliable long-term time series observations, this paper presents a new evaluation of the long-term variation of surface solar radiation over China by combining quality-controlled observed data and two radiation models. One is the ANN-based (Artificial Neutral Network) model and the other is a physical model. The two models produce radiation trends comparable to the observed ones at a few validation stations possessing reliable and continuous data. Then, the trend estimate is extended by the ANN-based model to all 96 radiation stations and furthermore extended by the physical model to all 716 China Meteorological Administration (CMA) routine stations. The new trend estimate is different from previous ones in two aspects. First, the magnitude of solar radiation over China decreased by about −0.23 W m−2 yr−1 between 1961 and 2000, which is greatly less in magnitude than trend slopes estimated in previous studies (ranging over −0.41 ~ −0.52 W m−2 yr−1). Second, the "From Dimming to Brightening" transition in China during the late 1980s ~ the early 1990s was addressed in previous studies, but this study indicates the solar radiation reached a stable level since the 1990s and the transition is not noticeable. These differences indicate the importance of data-quality control and analysis approaches. Finally, an obvious transition from brightening to dimming around 1978 is found over the Tibetan Plateau, where aerosol loads are very low, indicating that the importance of cloud changes in altering solar radiation may be comparable to that of the aerosol changes.
Highlights
As the ultimate energy source for the lives on our planet, solar radiation incident at the Earth’s surface drives most of the water, energy, and carbon cycles of the Earth’s system, and it is a major determinant of the climate conditions of our habitats (Wild et al, 2009b)
In order to get rid of their potential impacts, this study combines quality-controlled data and two radiation models to estimate the trend of surface solar radiation over China
Both estimates exhibit that surface solar radiation over China experiences a decreasing process, but the satellite-derived trend slope is much larger in magnitude than the one derived by the hybrid model
Summary
As the ultimate energy source for the lives on our planet, solar radiation incident at the Earth’s surface drives most of the water, energy, and carbon cycles of the Earth’s system, and it is a major determinant of the climate conditions of our habitats (Wild et al, 2009b). Liang and Xia (2005) did a similar study only with the data at 42 first-class stations recognized by the CMA Both studies indicated that there is a decreasing trend of solar radiation in China before the 1990s but it does not persist thereafter. In order to get rid of their potential impacts, this study combines quality-controlled data and two radiation models to estimate the trend of surface solar radiation over China. A quality control scheme is adopted to select long-term reliable observation data from 96 radiation stations and the selected dataset is applied to derive true radiation trends at the selected stations.
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