Effect of Aerosol Vertical Distribution on the Modeling of Solar Radiation

Abstract

Default aerosol extinction coefficient profiles are commonly used instead of measured profiles in radiative transfer modeling, increasing the uncertainties in the simulations. The present study aimed to determine the magnitude of these uncertainties and contribute towards the understanding of the complex interactions between aerosols and solar radiation. Default, artificial and measured profiles of the aerosol extinction coefficient were used to simulate the profiles of different radiometric quantities in the atmosphere for different surface, atmospheric, and aerosol properties and for four spectral bands: ultraviolet-B, ultraviolet-A, visible, and near-infrared. Case studies were performed over different areas in Europe and North Africa. Analysis of the results showed that under cloudless skies, changing the altitude of an artificial aerosol layer has minor impact on the levels of shortwave radiation at the top and bottom of the atmosphere, even for high aerosol loads. Differences of up to 30% were, however, detected for individual spectral bands. Using measured instead of default profiles for the simulations led to more significant differences in the atmosphere, which became very large during dust episodes (10–60% for actinic flux at altitudes between 1 and 2 km, and up to 15 K/day for heating rates depending on the site and solar elevation).

Using Radiometric Measurements to Separate Dust and Smoke Radiative Effects during a Combined Smoke–Dust Event

“…Deviations from the exact profiles are not expected to induce large uncertainties in the results of the radiative transfer simulations (e.g., [16]).…”

Rooftop Photovoltaic Energy Production Estimations in India Using Remotely Sensed Data and Methods

“…The standards atmosphere effect to solar radiation as compared to other atmospheres motives is directly related to the attenuation due to atmospheric gases, while for the standard aerosol selection the influence is related to the handling of the optical properties in terms of optical depth, Angstrom, single scattering albedo etc. For the RTM simulations, the standard atmosphere [41] and the default aerosol model [38] were used, while the uncertainty effect on solar irradiation under various molecular bands parameterization and aerosol typing is able to reach up to 60% under extreme atmospheric conditions and aerosol vertical distribution [42,43]. Using the aforementioned RTM process, we simulated GHI under three different conditions: clean and clear (no aerosols and no clouds; GHI clean & clear sky ), clear (no clouds; GHI clear sky ) and all sky (real condition; GHI all sky ).…”

Assessing Lidar Ratio Impact on CALIPSO Retrievals Utilized for the Estimation of Aerosol SW Radiative Effects across North Africa, the Middle East, and Europe

“…The ESA-CALIPSO dataset [93], EARLINET (The EARLINET publishing group 2000-2010), and AERONET products [94,95], in combination with aerosol models from the literature [96][97][98], were implemented for LIVAS development. From its establishment, LIVAS has contributed to various studies related to dust climatology and retrievals optimization [42,45,66,99], new dataset development [34], the assessment of aerosols' impact on radiation [66,[100][101][102], and model evaluation [103].…”