Implementation of a semiphysical model for examining solar radiation in the Midwest

Abstract

A semiphysical solar radiation (SR) model is implemented to generate a new historical daily SR database for 53 locations in nine Midwestern and six adjacent states. This model estimates daily SR using standard hourly meteorological observations (surface atmospheric pressure and dewpoint temperature; cloud height and fractional sky cover by layer) as well as time of day, day of year, latitude/longitude, and the daily presence/absence of snow cover as input. Because of an extensive effort to interpolate for missing input (especially cloud) data, the daily SR dataset generated is 92% complete for all 53 stations for 1948-91. Consistent with previous work, the model validates favorably against sets of daily SR measurements from (three) contrasting parts of the study region, and so its output is used here without adjustment. -from Authors