A Study on the Retrievals of Downward Solar Radiation at the Surface based on the Observations from Multiple Geostationary Satellites

The reflectance observed in the visible channels of a geostationary meteorological satellite can be used to calculate the amount of cloud by comparing the reflectance with the observed solar radiation data at the ground. Using this, the solar radiation arriving at the surface can be estimated. This study used the Meteorological Imager (MI) reflectance observed at a wavelength of 675 nm and the Geostationary Ocean Color Imager (GOCI) reflectance observed at similar wavelengths of 660 and 680 nm. Cloudy days during a typhoon and sunny days with little cloud cover were compared using observation data from the geostationary satellite. Pixels that had more than 40% reflectance in the satellite images showed less than 0.3 of the cloud index and blocked more than 70% of the solar energy. Pixels that showed less than 15% reflectance showed more than 0.9 of the cloud index and let through more than 90% of the solar energy to the surface. The calculated daily accumulated solar radiation was compared with the observed daily accumulated solar radiation in 22 observatories of the Korean Meteorological Administration. The values calculated for the COMS and MTSAT MI sensors were smaller than the observation and showed low correlations of 0.94 and 0.93, respectively, which were smaller than the 0.96 correlation coefficient calculated for the GOCI sensor. The RMSEs of MTSAT, COMS MI and GOCI calculation results showed 2.21, 2.09, 2.02 MJ/m(2) in order. Comparison of the calculated daily accumulated results from the GOCI sensor with the observed data on the ground gave correlations and RMSEs for cloudy and sunny days of 0.96 and 0.86, and 1.82 MJ/m(2) and 2.27 MJ/m(2), respectively, indicating a slightly higher correlation for cloudy days. Compared to the meteorological imager, the geostationary ocean color imager in the COMS satellite has limited observation time and observation is not continuous. However, it has the advantage of providing high resolution so that it too can be useful for solar energy analysis.