Climate-specific and global validation of MODIS Aqua and Terra aerosol optical depth at 452 AERONET stations

Bright, Jamie M.; Gueymard, Christian A.

doi:10.1016/j.solener.2019.03.043

Cited by 58 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…Yet satellites cannot retrieve AOD of areas with thick clouds or high surface-albedo. Bright and Gueymard[86] (452 AERONET stations, 18 years) validated the AOD data monitored by MODIS Aqua and Terra satellites. L and β were 3.63 and 0.094 resp, while the highest values were 5.07 and 0.159.…”

mentioning

confidence: 78%

Dust impact on concentrated solar power: A review

Zereg

Gama

Aksas³

et al. 2021

Environmental Engineering Research

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Many sites with high solar radiation face high dust loads that reduce energy generation by concentrated solar power plants. This review presents the attenuative impacts of atmospheric aerosols, as well as reflectivity losses due to soiling of solar reflectors, by covering both experimental investigations and numerical studies; along with presenting the theoretical background. The chemical nature of aerosols, and the physics of soiling and atmospheric extinction phenomena (scattering and absorption) are also reviewed. Suspended particles like aerosols result in atmospheric extinction of the solar radiation that reaches the concentrators, and the deposition of these particles on the solar reflectors provokes decreases up to 80% in their reflectivity, and thus enhances the cumulus of optical losses and the reduction of energy production. Even though dust affects both CSP and photovoltaics, CSP technologies suffer more losses. The impact of dust should be particularly considered during the planning phase of solar thermal plants, since its consequent reduction in energy output can be severe. While there have been multiple papers to review dust-related problems for PV, the present paper is the first literature review dedicated to the impact of soiling on concentrated solar power.

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mentioning

confidence: 78%

Dust impact on concentrated solar power: A review

Zereg

Gama

Aksas³

et al. 2021

Environmental Engineering Research

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“…This ensures comparability to the measurement station and is especially needed in regions with highly variable orography (e.g., high altitude sites). Note, that this approach is different of using a scale-height correction for AOD only (e.g., Bright and Gueymard, 2019), as AOD, AE, SSA, ASY as well as the clear sky irradiance are compared to ground based observations in this study.…”

Section: Collocation To Measurement Stationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aerosol properties and aerosol–radiation interactions in clear sky conditions over Germany

Witthuhn¹,

Hünerbein²,

Filipitsch³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Abstract. The clear-sky radiative effect of aerosol-radiation interactions is of relevance for our understanding of the climate system. The influence of aerosol on the surface energy budget is of high interest for the renewable energy sector. In this study, the radiative effect is investigated in particular with respect to seasonal and regional variations for the region of Germany and the year 2015 at the surface and top of atmosphere using two complementary approaches. First, an ensemble of clear-sky models which explicitly consider aerosols is utilized to retrieve the aerosol optical depth and the surface direct radiative effect of aerosols by means of a clear sky fitting technique. For this, short-wave broadband irradiance measurements in the absence of clouds are used as a basis. A clear sky detection algorithm is used to identify cloud free observations. Considered are measurements of the shortwave broadband global and diffuse horizontal irradiance with shaded and unshaded pyranometers at 25 stations across Germany within the observational network of the German Weather Service (DWD). Clear sky models used are MMAC, MRMv6.1, METSTAT, ESRA, Heliosat-1, CEM and the simplified Solis model. The definition of aerosol and atmospheric characteristics of the models are examined in detail for their suitability for this approach. Second, the radiative effect is estimated using explicit radiative transfer simulations with inputs on the meteorological state of the atmosphere, trace-gases and aerosol from CAMS reanalysis. The aerosol optical properties (aerosol optical depth, Ångström exponent, single scattering albedo and assymetrie parameter) are first evaluated with AERONET direct sun and inversion products. The largest inconsistency is found for the aerosol absorption, which is overestimated by about 0.03 or about 30 % by the CAMS reanalysis. Compared to the DWD observational network, the simulated global, direct and diffuse irradiances show reasonable agreement within the measurement uncertainty. The radiative kernel method is used to estimate the resulting uncertainty and bias of the simulated direct radiative effect. The uncertainty is estimated to −1.5 ± 7.7 and 0.6 ± 3.5 W m−2 at the surface and top of atmosphere, respectively, while the annual-mean biases at the surface, top of atmosphere and total atmosphere are −10.6, −6.5 and 4.1 W m−2, respectively. The retrieval of the aerosol radiative effect with the clear sky models shows a high level of agreement with the radiative transfer simulations, with an RMSE of 5.8 W m−2 and a correlation of 0.75. The annual mean of the REari at the surface for the 25 DWD stations shows a value of −12.8 ± 5 W m−2 as average over the clear sky models, compared to −11 W m−2 from the radiative transfer simulations. Since all models assume a fixed aerosol characterisation, the annual cycle of the aerosol radiation effect cannot be reproduced. Out of this set of clear sky models, the largest level of agreement is shown by the ESRA and MRMv6.1 models.

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“…Note that this approach is different of using a scaleheight correction for AOD only (e.g. Bright and Gueymard, 2019), as AOD, AE, SSA, ASY and the clear-sky irradiance are compared to ground-based observations in this study.…”

Section: Collocation To Measurement Stationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…CSMs are widely used to estimate the solar irradiance at the surface in cloudfree conditions. Applications range from the evaluation of power generation of photo-voltaic power plants (Bright et al, 2017) to the determination of the global radiation budget on a spatial resolution which is not possible with ground-based observations (Ruiz-Arias and Gueymard, 2018). These models can also be used in the quality control of observational data (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aerosol properties and aerosol–radiation interactions in clear-sky conditions over Germany

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. The clear-sky radiative effect of aerosol–radiation interactions is of relevance for our understanding of the climate system. The influence of aerosol on the surface energy budget is of high interest for the renewable energy sector. In this study, the radiative effect is investigated in particular with respect to seasonal and regional variations for the region of Germany and the year 2015 at the surface and top of atmosphere using two complementary approaches. First, an ensemble of clear-sky models which explicitly consider aerosols is utilized to retrieve the aerosol optical depth and the surface direct radiative effect of aerosols by means of a clear-sky fitting technique. For this, short-wave broadband irradiance measurements in the absence of clouds are used as a basis. A clear-sky detection algorithm is used to identify cloud-free observations. Considered are measurements of the short-wave broadband global and diffuse horizontal irradiance with shaded and unshaded pyranometers at 25 stations across Germany within the observational network of the German Weather Service (DWD). The clear-sky models used are the Modified MAC model (MMAC), the Meteorological Radiation Model (MRM) v6.1, the Meteorological–Statistical solar radiation model (METSTAT), the European Solar Radiation Atlas (ESRA), Heliosat-1, the Center for Environment and Man solar radiation model (CEM), and the simplified Solis model. The definition of aerosol and atmospheric characteristics of the models are examined in detail for their suitability for this approach. Second, the radiative effect is estimated using explicit radiative transfer simulations with inputs on the meteorological state of the atmosphere, trace gases and aerosol from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) reanalysis. The aerosol optical properties (aerosol optical depth, Ångström exponent, single scattering albedo and asymmetry parameter) are first evaluated with AERONET direct sun and inversion products. The largest inconsistency is found for the aerosol absorption, which is overestimated by about 0.03 or about 30 % by the CAMS reanalysis. Compared to the DWD observational network, the simulated global, direct and diffuse irradiances show reasonable agreement within the measurement uncertainty. The radiative kernel method is used to estimate the resulting uncertainty and bias of the simulated direct radiative effect. The uncertainty is estimated to −1.5 ± 7.7 and 0.6 ± 3.5 W m−2 at the surface and top of atmosphere, respectively, while the annual-mean biases at the surface, top of atmosphere and total atmosphere are −10.6, −6.5 and 4.1 W m−2, respectively. The retrieval of the aerosol radiative effect with the clear-sky models shows a high level of agreement with the radiative transfer simulations, with an RMSE of 5.8 W m−2 and a correlation of 0.75. The annual mean of the REari at the surface for the 25 DWD stations shows a value of −12.8 ± 5 W m−2 as the average over the clear-sky models, compared to −11 W m−2 from the radiative transfer simulations. Since all models assume a fixed aerosol characterization, the annual cycle of the aerosol radiation effect cannot be reproduced. Out of this set of clear-sky models, the largest level of agreement is shown by the ESRA and MRM v6.1 models.

show abstract

Climate-specific and global validation of MODIS Aqua and Terra aerosol optical depth at 452 AERONET stations

Cited by 58 publications

References 53 publications

Dust impact on concentrated solar power: A review

Dust impact on concentrated solar power: A review

Aerosol properties and aerosol–radiation interactions in clear sky conditions over Germany

Aerosol properties and aerosol–radiation interactions in clear-sky conditions over Germany

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