Empirical Verification of Satellite Data on Solar Radiation and Cloud Cover over the Baltic Sea

Abstract

Abstract Empirical verification of the reliability of estimating the amount of solar radiation entering the sea surface is a challenging topic due to the quantity and quality of data. The collected measurements of total and diffuse radiation from the Multifilter Rotating Shadowband Radiometer (MRF-7) commercial device over the Baltic Sea were compared with the satellite results of using modeling data. The obtained results, also divided into individual spectral bands, were analyzed for usefulness in satellite cloud and aerosol detection. The article presents a new approach to assessing radiation and cloud cover based on the use of models supported by satellite data. Measurement uncertainties were estimated for the obtained results. To reduce uncertainty, the results were averaged to the time constant of the device, day, and month. The effectiveness of the method was determined by comparison against the SM Hel measurement point. The empirical results obtained confirm the effectiveness of using satellite methods for estimating radiation along with cloud-cover detection over the sea with the adopted uncertainty values. Significance Statement The difference in the amount of solar energy reaching the sea surface between cloudless and cloudy areas reaches tens of percent. Empirical results confirm the effectiveness of using satellite methods to estimate solar radiation along with cloud-cover detection. Over the sea in comparison to land, the amount of empirical data is limited. This research uses new empirical results of radiation to determine the accuracy of satellite estimation results. Experimental results show that the proposed method is effective and adequately parameterizes the detection of satellite image features.