Applied Energy 86 (2009) 14501457

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Applied Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apenergy

A model for calculating hourly global solar radiation from satellite

data in the tropics
S. Janjai *, P. Pankaew, J. Laksanaboonsong
Solar Energy Research Laboratory, Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Silpakorn University, Nakhon Pathom 73000, Thailand

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: A model for calculating global solar radiation from geostationary satellite data is presented. The model is
Received 28 November 2008 designed to calculate the monthly average hourly global radiation in the tropics with high aerosol load.
Received in revised form 5 February 2009 This model represents a physical relation between the earth-atmospheric albedo derived from GMS5
Accepted 6 February 2009
satellite data and the absorption and scattering coefcients of various atmospheric constituents. The
Available online 13 March 2009
absorption of solar radiation by water vapour which is important for the tropics, was calculated from
ambient temperature and relative humidity. The relationship between the visibility and solar radiation
Keywords:
depletion due to aerosols was developed for a high aerosol load environment. This relationship was used
Solar radiation
Satellite data
to calculate solar radiation depletion by aerosols in the model. The total column ozone from TOMS/EP
Modelling satellite was employed for the determination of solar radiation absorbed by ozone. Solar radiation from
Aerosols four pyranometer stations was used to formulate the relationship between the satellite band earth-atmo-
Tropical environment spheric albedo and broadband earth-atmospheric albedo required by the model. To test its performance,
Hourly global radiation the model was used to compute the monthly average hourly global radiation at 25 solar radiation mon-
itoring stations in tropical areas in Thailand. It was found that the values of monthly average of hourly
global radiations calculated from the model were in good agreement with those obtained from the mea-
surements, with the root mean square difference of 10%. After the validation the model was employed to
generate hourly solar radiation maps of Thailand. These maps reveal the diurnal and season variation of
solar radiation over the country.
2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Knowledge of solar radiation incident on the earths surface is
essential to architects and engineers for energy-efcient building
designs and solar energy applications [14]. The solar radiation
has temporal and spatial variations. To collect this information, a
network of solar monitoring stations equipped with pyranometers
and data acquisition systems are generally established in the de-
sired locations. However, the number of such stations in the net-
work is usually not sufcient to provide solar radiation data of
the desired areas, especially in developing countries. This is mainly
due to the high equipment and maintenance costs. An alternative
solution to this problem is to estimate solar radiation by using a
modelling approach [512]. Modelling of solar radiation also pro-
vides an understanding of dynamics of solar radiation and it is
clearly of great value in the design of solar energy conversion
systems.
As cloud is a main factor affecting solar radiation and detected
routinely by meteorological satellites, a number of models have
been developed to estimate solar radiation by using satellite data
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +66 34 270761; fax: +66 34 271189.
E-mail address: serm@su.ac.th (S. Janjai).
[1331]. Two different approaches are available for modelling solar
radiation using satellite data; these approaches are (i) statistical
modelling and (ii) physical modelling [3235]. In the statistical
modelling, the satellite data over a given area statistically deter-
mine the global radiation over that area while the physical models
are essentially radiative transfer models which simulate the atmo-
spheric effect on solar radiation. When these satellite radiation
models are applied to all satellite pixels covering a particular area,
solar radiation maps showing geographical variation of solar radi-
ation of that area can be generated [36,37]. The maps provide use-
ful information for site selections and design of solar energy
conversion systems. The accuracy of such maps depends on both
the performance of the models and the accuracy of the model input
data over that area. High performance models with low accuracy
input data result in poor accuracy of radiation maps. In general,
most satellite radiation models can generate daily irradiation with
relatively high accuracy compared to the ground-based pyranom-
eter data [21,30]. However, a number of satellite radiation models
have difculties to generate accurate hourly irradiance. In some
cases, discrepancies between the satellite-derived irradiance and
measurement are in the range of 2040% [26,31]. Cloud elds
and cloud structures usually change within the period of an hour,
and one or two satellite images are not sufcient to represent

0306-2619/$ - see front matter 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.apenergy.2009.02.005
 S. Janjai et al. / Applied Energy 86 (2009) 14501457 1451

Nomenclature

daer aerosol depletion coefcient () T ambient air temperature (K)

Iclean hourly solar global irradiation under cloudless sky with u total column ozone (cm NTP)
no aerosols (MJ/m2 h) U3 ozone relative optical path length (cm)
Iturbid hourly solar global irradiation under cloudless sky with VIS visibility (km)
aerosols (MJ/m2 h) W precipitable water (cm)
ISUR hourly global solar radiation incident on the ground aaer absorption coefcient due to aerosols ()
(MJ/m2 h) ao absorption coefcient due to ozone ()
ITOA hourly extraterrestrial solar radiation incident at the top aw absorption coefcient due to water vapour ()
of the atmosphere (MJ/m2 h) qB broad-band earth-atmospheric albedo ()
mr relative air mass () qEA satellite band earth-atmospheric albedo ()
MBD mean bias difference (%) qG surface albedo ()
Ps saturated water vapour pressure [mbar] saer transmission coefcient due to aerosols ()
rh relative humidity () so transmission coefcient due to ozone ()
R2 correlation coefcient ()
RMSD root mean square difference (%)

the cloud information of the hour, causing signicant error of the reected to space. To develop the model, the earths atmosphere
calculation. Therefore, instead of the calculation of instantaneous was assumed to consist of two layers (Fig. 2). The rst layer is from
solar radiation, we propose a new satellite-based solar radiation the top of the atmosphere (TOA) to the top layer of the clouds
model for calculating monthly average hourly global irradiation while the second layer is from the top layer of the clouds to the
in order to reduce the effect of short-term uctuation of clouds. ground. Solar radiation is incident on the top of the atmosphere
The results of the calculation will represent the climatological as- (ITOA) and part of it is absorbed by ozone with the transmittance
pect of hourly global irradiation on the area of interest, which is so while the rest travels to the second layer and it is partly reected
usually required for designing solar energy systems. to outer space by clouds, air molecules and aerosols in the second
Most satellite-based solar radiation models were developed layer and the ground with the reectance qB. The remaining por-
from meteorological and satellite data in Europe and North Amer- tion is absorbed by atmospheric aerosols with the absorptance aaer
ica [1318] and only a few models were developed for the tropics
[21,30,36]. Therefore, this work emphasizes on the development of
a satellite-based solar radiation model for the tropics. As aerosols
play a very important role in the accuracy of satellite-derived solar
radiation due to their high variability in sizes, types and optical
properties, we also propose a method for calculating solar radia-
tion depletion by aerosols which is very important for the high aer-
osol load in the atmosphere of Southeast Asia [38]. The
development of the model is based on the tropical environment
of Thailand.

2. Processing of satellite data

The satellite data used in this work were obtained from the vis-
ible channel (0.550.90 lm) of the GMS5 satellite data collected
during the period: 19952002. They are hourly digital data taken
at 8:30, 9:30, 10:30, 11:30, 12:30, 13:30, 14:30 and 15:30 h. The
data displayed as images cover the whole area of Thailand with a
spatial resolution of 3  3 km2. These images were transformed
to the cylindrical map projection and navigated using coastlines
as references. Each navigated image consists of 500  800 pixels.
Each pixel has a gray level in the range of 0255. An example of
a navigated image is shown in Fig. 1.
The pixels of each navigated image were further converted into
earth-atmospheric albedo (qEA) using a conversion table provided
by a satellite agency [39]. After the correction for the incident an-
gle of solar radiation, these image data were then used as input for
the satellite model.

3. Model development

3.1. Formulation of the model

The model proposed in this work is a physical model that re-

lates solar radiation incident on the ground to the radiation ab-
sorbed by various atmospheric constituents and radiation Fig. 1. Example of a navigated image.
1452 S. Janjai et al. / Applied Energy 86 (2009) 14501457

Sun
cludes the effect of the gas absorption (except for ozone) which can
be expressed as [2]:
Satellite
2:9U 1
aw 3
1  141:5U 1 0:635 5:925U 1
Top of the atmosphere (TOA)
where U1 is a function of precipitable water (w) and relative air
ITOA mass (mr) as follows:
U 1 wmr 4
( 1 o )ITOA
The precipitable water (w in cm) was calculated from any empirical
O3 O3 Layer 1 formula as follows: [30]
 
Ozone rhP s
B o ITOA w 0:8933 exp 0:1715 5
o ITOA T
where T is the surface air temperature (at screen level) in K, rh is the
Cloud relative humidity of the surface air, and Ps is the saturated water va-
pour pressure in mbar.
o ITOA ( w + aer ) I sur G ( w + aer ) Layer 2
Aerosols 3.2.2. Transmission coefcient of ozone (so)
I sur G I sur Ozone absorbs solar radiation both in the visible and ultraviolet
Water vapour
parts of the solar spectrum. The following formula proposed by La-
Ground cis and Hansen [40] was employed to calculate the absorption
coefcient of ozone (ao) as follows:
Absorption of radiation
Incident radiation or reflection of radiation 0:021U 3 1:082U 3
ao
1 0:042U 3 3:23  104 U 23 1 138:6U 3 0:805
Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of the radiation budget.
0:0658U 3
6
and by water vapour with the absorptance aw while traveling 1 103:6U 3 3
through the second layer to the ground. The radiation incident U3 is expressed as a function of total column ozone (u in cm NTP)
on the ground is ISUR. It is partly absorbed by the ground and partly and relative air mass (mr) as:
reected back with the surface albedo qG through the second and
the rst layer to outer space. Again, it is depleted by aerosols and U 3 umr 7
water vapour in the second layer and by ozone in the rst layer. The values of daily total column ozone with a pixel resolution of 1
This radiation budget is schematically shown in Fig. 2. latitude  1.25 longitude were retrieved from TOMS/EP satellite.
Consider the radiation budget at the interface between the layer Consequently, the transmission coefcient of ozone (so) is obtained
1 and layer 2 which can be expressed as: from
so ITOA  qB so ITOA 1  qG ISUR aw aaer so ITOA so 1  ao 8
aw aaer qG ISUR 1
The left-hand side of Eq. (1), is the energy difference between the 3.2.3. Absorption coefcient of aerosols (aaer)
downwelling and the upwelling radiation at the interface of the Aerosols play a very crucial role for the calculation of solar radi-
two layers. On the right hand side of Eq. (1), the rst term repre- ation from satellite data, especially for an area with high aerosol
sents radiation absorbed by the ground and the second and the load. The most accurate method to acquire aerosol information is
third terms represent the radiation absorption by water vapour the use of aerosol optical depth data obtained from a sunphotom-
and aerosols of the downwelling and upwelling radiation, eter. However, the number of meteorological stations equipped
respectively. with such instrument is very limited, due to high equipment costs.
Rearranging the terms in Eq. (1) the hourly global solar radia- To overcome this problem, we propose to use visibility data to
tion incident on the ground is given by: quantify the effect of aerosols on solar radiation. This is due to
the fact that aerosol loads are implicitly related to visibility [2].
so  so qB  so aw  so aaer High aerosol loads result in a low visibility. For Thailand, values
ISUR ITOA 2
1  qG qG aw qG aaer  of visibility over the country are in the range of 515 km year
The radiation incident on the top of the atmosphere ITOA can be cal- round [41] and the atmospheric turbidity and aerosol optical depth
culated from the formula reported in Iqbal [2] while other model at a number of locations are high [42,43]. This implies that the
parameters in the right hand side of Eq. (2) are obtained from the country has high aerosol loads. This is mainly due to intensive bio-
methods explained in the next section. As the cloud eld changes mass burning and rapid urbanization in this region.
considerably within one hour, instead of calculating solar radiation To determine the solar radiation depletion by aerosols, we rst
for each hour, we propose to calculate monthly average of hourly dene an aerosol depletion coefcient (daer) as follows:
irradiation. Therefore, the values of all parameters in Eq. (2) are Iclean  Iturbid
monthly averages for each hour. daer 9
Iclean

3.2. Determination of model parameters
3.2.1. Absorption coefcient of water vapour (aw)
The formula proposed by Lacis and Hansen [40] was used to cal-
culate the absorption coefcient of water vapour. This formula in-
where Iclean is surface hourly solar global irradiation under cloudless
sky with no aerosols and Iturbid is surface hourly global solar irradi-
ation under cloudless sky with aerosols indicated by visibility. Next,
a radiative transfer model developed by Tanr et al. [44] was used
to calculate Iclean and Iturbid.
 S. Janjai et al. / Applied Energy 86 (2009) 14501457 1453

4
25 STATIONS, 2002

8:00-9:00
9:00-10:00
3
10:00-11:00

I SUR(MEA) (MJm h )
-2 -1
11:00-12:00
12:00-13:00
13:00-14:00
2
14:00-15:00
15:00-16:00

1
RMSD = 10 %
1 : 1 line

0
0 1 2 3 4
-2 -1
ISUR(MODEL) (MJm h )
Fig. 5. Comparison between monthly average hourly global radiation calculated
from the model ISURMODEL and those obtained from measurements ISURMEA .

This radiative transfer model was designed to calculate all com-

ponents of clear sky solar radiation at any levels of the atmosphere.
Main input parameters of the model are solar zenith angle, precip-
itable water, total column ozone and visibility. In this work, we
used this model to calculate Iturbid at our four solar radiation mon-
itoring stations located at Chiang Mai, Ubon Ratchathani, Nakhon
Pathom and Songkhla (Fig. 3), by employing the input data ob-
served at these stations. For the calculation of Iclean, the model ac-
cepted water vapour and ozone absorption but assumed no aerosol
depletion. The values of Iclean and Iturbid obtained from the model
Fig. 3. Positions of pyranometer stations used for the conversion of satellite band
were employed to calculate daer at different values of the air mass
earth-atmospheric albedo (qEA) to broadband earth-atmospheric albedo (qB) ( )
and for model validation (). A, B, C and D indicate the four main regions, namely (mr) and visibility (VIS in km) and the following relation was
the north, the northeast, the central region and the south, respectively. obtained:
h im0:9
r
daer 1  1:0358  0:3293VIS0:66 10
0.7 Consequently, the atmospheric transmission coefcient due to
YEAR 2002 aerosols is given by
0.6 saer 1  daer
Broadband earth-atmospheric albedo ( B)

Chiang Mai 11
Ubon Ratchathani Finally, the transmission coefcient saer is split into scattering coef-
0.5 cient and absorption coefcient (aaer) by using the radiative trans-
Nakhon Pathom
fer model of Tanr et al. and solar radiation from measurements
Songkhla
0.4 [30,44].

0.3
Table 1
Root mean square difference (RMSD) and mean bias difference (MBD) between solar
0.2 radiation calculated from the model and the measurements.

Time (h) RMSD (%) MBD (%)

B = 0.8035EA + 0.0716
0.1 2 8:009:00 14.7 8.4
R = 0.8027 9:0010:00 9.3 2.9
10:0011:00 7.5 0.5
0.0 11:0012:00 8.0 2.7
0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 12:0013:00 9.6 5.7
13:0014:00 10.5 7.0
Satellite band earth-atmospheric albedo (EA) 14:0015:00 10.7 5.6
15:0016:00 12.9 1.7
Fig. 4. Relationship between hourly satellite band earth-atmospheric albedo (qEA) All hours 10.0 2.3
and broadband earth-atmospheric albedo (qB).
1454 S. Janjai et al. / Applied Energy 86 (2009) 14501457

3.2.4. Surface albedo (qG)
The surface albedo for the whole country for each month was
estimated using the processed satellite data. All near-noon images
(12:30 h local time) were examined for a given month and pixels
were selected with lowest value for that month. The images were
then converted into broadband surface albedo using method re-
ported by Janjai et al. [45] which is based on the model of Tanr
et al. [44].
3.2.5. Broadband earth-atmospheric albedo (qB)
The earth-atmospheric albedo (qEA) obtained from GMS5 satel-
lite data is in the satellite wavelength band of 0.550.90 lm but

Fig. 6. The monthly average of hourly global solar irradiation maps for the JanuaryJune.
 S. Janjai et al. / Applied Energy 86 (2009) 14501457 1455

the satellite-based solar radiation model Eq. (2) needs broadband (15.25 N, 104.87 E), Nakhon Pathom (13.82 N, 100.04 E) and
earth-atmospheric albedo (qB) which is in the wavelength band Songkhla (7.20 N, 100.60 E). The positions of these four stations
of solar radiation or broadband (0.33.0 lm). To convert qEA into are shown in Fig. 3.
qB, we propose to use Eq. (2) together with broadband global solar Rearranging Eq. (2) yields:
radiation measured at our four solar radiation monitoring stations Isur
located at Chiang Mai (18.78 N, 98.98 E), Ubon Ratchathani qB 1  qG qG aw qG aaer  1  aw  aaer 12
so ITOA

Fig. 7. The monthly average of hourly global solar irradiation maps for the JulyDecember.
1456 S. Janjai et al. / Applied Energy 86 (2009) 14501457

By inputting the monthly average of hourly values of all parameters
measured at the four stations for the year 2002 in the right hand
side of Eq. (12), the values of qB were obtained. At the same time,
the corresponding values of qEA at the positions of the four stations
were extracted from the satellite data. Then the values of qEA were
plotted against those of qB (Fig. 4) and the best-tted equation of
the plot is
qB 0:8035qEA 0:0716 13
Eq. (13) was used to convert qEA into qB for the model validation
and radiation mapping explained in the next sections.
4. Validation of the model
To validate its performance, the model was used to calculate
monthly average hourly global radiation at 25 pyranometer sta-
tions in Thailand. These stations were established by the Solar En-
ergy Research Laboratory, Department of Physics, Silpakorn
University, for the Department of Alternative Energy Development
and Efciency of Thailand. Each station was equipped with a pyra-
nometer (Kipp & Zonen, CM 11) and a digital data logger (Yokoga-
wa, DC-100). The signals from the pyranometers were recorded
every second and these signals were averaged for every 10 min.
The average values were recorded in the memory of the data logger
and then were sent to the Laboratory at the end of each month. At
the Laboratory the signals were converted into hourly solar irradi-
ation in MJ/m2 hr. The pyranometers were calibrated against a re-
cently-calibrated pyranometer supplied by Kipp & Zonen once a
year. The positions of these stations are shown in Fig. 3. One-year
period (JanuaryDecember, 2002) of global radiation data from
these stations were compared to those calculated from the model.
The solar radiation from these 25 stations are an independent data
set because they were not involved in the model development. The
comparison results are shown in Fig. 5 and Table 1.
Fig. 5 and Table 1 show the accuracy of the model for different
times of the day. Table 1 shows that the values of root mean square
difference (RMSD) of the early morning (8:009:00 h) and the late
afternoon (15:0016:00 h) are relatively higher than those between
10:0014:00 h. This is likely to be due to the fact that Thailand is
situated near the western edge of the satellite image and there is
non-Lambertian reection to the satellite in the early morning
and late afternoon images, causing more errors in the calculation.
However, for all the data set, the root mean square difference and
the mean bias difference (MBD) are only 10% and 2.3%, respec-
tively. This means that the solar radiation calculated from the mod-
el agrees well with that of the measurements for most cases.
5. Mapping monthly average hourly irradiation
In the mapping process, input data of all parameters of the
model Eq. (2) are needed for entire areas corresponding to the sa-
tellite pixels. We used surface air temperature and relative humid-
ity to compute the values of precipitable water at 80
meteorological stations over the country using Eq. (5). Then the
values were linearly interpolated to all locations corresponding
to the satellite pixels. Similarly, the visibility data observed at
these stations were also linearly interpolated and employed to
compute the aerosol absorption coefcient (aaer). An eight-year
period (19952002) of GMS5 satellite data were used to calculate
the broadband earth-atmospheric albedo (qB) employing Eq. (13).
The ozone absorption (ao) was computed from ozone data re-
trieved from the TOMS/EP satellite. All of these input data were
prepared on the monthly average hourly basis. Finally, monthly
average hourly global irradiation for each hour for all pixels was
calculated using Eq. (2) and the results were averaged again over
the period of 8 years. The results are displayed as hourly irradiation
maps shown in Figs. 6 and 7.
The solar maps in Figs. 6 and 7 exhibit diurnal and seasonal
variations of monthly average hourly global radiation in Thailand.
For the diurnal variation, it is clearly seen that monthly average
hourly radiation of every month increases from the morning to
the maximum at noon then gradually decreases to the minimum
in the evening.
The seasonal variation is more pronounced for the high solar
radiation hours, namely 11:0012:00, 12:0013:00 and 13:00
14:00. From the maps of these hours (Figs. 6 and 7) high solar radi-
ation areas expand progressively from the south to the north (see
the positions of the region in Fig. 3). This is mainly due to the
change of the suns declination toward the celestial equator, caus-
ing an increase of the extraterrestrial horizontal radiation. It is ob-
served that most parts of the north receive less radiation than the
rest of the country. This is likely because most parts of the north
are mountainous and forest areas which cause more cloud forma-
tion, thus reducing solar radiation. In general, at the middle of May
the south-west monsoon starts to blow from the Andaman Sea to
the country, causing rainfall and cloudy skies. The effect of the
south-west monsoon is gradually stronger from June to October,
thus reducing solar radiation levels over the country. Although
during May to August, the extraterrestrial horizontal radiation is
relatively high for the entire country, the effect of the south-west
monsoon is strongly dominated.
In October, the monsoon changes from the south-west mon-
soon to the north-east monsoon. The north-east monsoon brings
dry and cold air to the country, causing clearer skies for most
parts of the country. However, solar radiation in the country
slightly decreases to the end of the year. This is due to the fact
that from September to December, the apparent suns path in
the sky moves southward from the celestial equator, resulting
in a decrease of the extraterrestrial horizontal radiation over
the country.
A database for the satellite-derived monthly average hourly glo-
bal radiation was also developed for solar energy applications in
this country. The program of the database was written in Visual Ba-
sic language.
6. Conclusion
A satellite-based solar radiation model has been developed
using the climatic conditions in the tropical environment of Thai-
land. The model relates solar radiation incident on the ground to
the radiation absorbed by various atmospheric constituents and
radiation reected to space which is picked up by the satellite. A
relationship between the visibility and the solar radiation deple-
tion by aerosols has been established for a high aerosol load envi-
ronment. The model was used to compute solar radiation at 25
pyranometer stations. It was found that the monthly average
hourly global radiation agreed well with that obtained from the
measurements, with the root mean square difference 10% from
the mean value. The model was used to generate monthly average
hourly global solar radiation maps of the country. A database for
the monthly average hourly global radiation was also developed
for solar energy applications in this country.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the Department of Alternative
Energy Development and Efciency and the Thailand Research
Fund (TRF) for the nancial support to this research work. The
authors would like also to thank Dr. Manuel Nunez and Prof. B.K.
Bala for their valuable advice.
 S. Janjai et al. / Applied Energy 86 (2009) 14501457 1457

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