Estimation of monthly mean solar radiation from air temperature in combination with other routinely observed meteorological data in Yangtze River Basin in China

✍ Scribed by Ji-Long Chen; Guo-Sheng Li

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2012
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 249 KB
• Volume: 21
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1350-4827
• DOI: 10.1002/met.1306

✦ Synopsis

Solar radiation is the principal and fundamental energy for many physical, chemical and biological processes. However, it is measured at a limited number of meteorological stations in the world. Estimation of solar radiation from the measured meteorological variables offers an important alternative in the absence of measured solar radiation. In this paper, 12 developed models are studied comparatively, using long-term data from 14 sites in Yangtze River Basin in China, the performances are evaluated using the root mean square error (RMSE) and relative root mean square error (RRMSE). All the models fit the data adequately and can be used to estimate solar radiation. The newly developed model which used monthly mean daily maximum and minimum temperature, relative humidity, atmospheric pressure and the multiplication mean maximum temperature by minimum temperature gives the best performance, with the lowest RMSE (averaged 1.228 MJ m -2 ) and RRMSE (averaged 11.37%). Therefore, its use is suggested to estimate solar radiation in Yangtze River Basin, and it is more applicable in an area with larger temperature range.