Estimation of daily average net radiation from MODIS data and DEM over the Baiyangdian watershed in North China for clear sky days

Daily average net radiation (DANR) is a critical variable for estimation of daily evapotranspiration (ET) from remote sensing techniques at watershed or regional scales, and in turn for hydrological modeling and water resources management. This study attempts to comprehensively analyze physical mechanisms governing the variation of each component of DANR during a day, with the objective to improve parameterization schemes for daily average net shortwave radiation (DANSR) and daily average net longwave radiation (DANLR) using MODIS (MODerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) data products, DEM, and minimum meteorological data in order to map spatially consistent and reasonably distributed DANR at watershed scales for clear sky days. First, a geometric model for simulating daily average direct solar radiation by accounting for the effects of terrain factors (slope, azimuth and elevation) on the availability of direct solar radiation for sloping land surfaces is adopted. Specifically, the magnitudes of sunrise and sunset angles, the frequencies of a sloping surface being illuminated as well as the potential sunshine duration for a given sloping surface are computed on a daily basis. The geometric model is applied to the Baiyangdian watershed in North China, with showing the capability to distinctly characterize the spatial pattern of daily average direct solar radiation for sloping land surfaces. DANSR can then be successfully derived from simulated daily average direct solar radiation by means of the geometric model and the characteristics of nearly invariant diffuse solar radiation during daytime in conjunction with MCD43A1 albedo products. Second, four observations of Terra-MODIS and Aqua-MODIS land surface temperature (LST) and surface emissivities in band 31 and band 32 from MOD11A1, MYD11A1 and MOD11_L2 data products for six clear sky days from April to September in the year 2007, are utilized to simulate daily average LST to improve the accuracy of estimates of DANLR. Comparisons of the DANLR estimates from the proposed four observation-based method and that from an existing one observation-based method, against that from the Penmen equation solely using routine meteorological data indicates that the proposed method is capable of more accurately simulating DANLR than is the one observation-based method. Using the Penman equation as a reference, results show that overall the proposed method has a bias of 2.7 W m(-2) and a root mean square error (RMSE) of 12.8 W m(-2), whereas the one observation-based method has a bias of -33.3 W m(-2) and a RMSE of 39.6 W m(-2) across 18 weather stations for six tested days. In general, simulated DANR is shown to be reasonable over the entire study watershed for the six clear sky days as a result of the improvement in the parameterization schemes of DANSR and DANLR. The resulting DANR would serve well as a critical variable linking instantaneous evaporative fraction to the estimates of daily Er primarily from remotely sensed data. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

[1]  Lindi J. Quackenbush,et al.  Spatial modelling of evapotranspiration in the Luquillo experimental forest of Puerto Rico using remotely-sensed data , 2006 .

[2]  A. Holtslag,et al.  A remote sensing surface energy balance algorithm for land (SEBAL)-1. Formulation , 1998 .

[3]  Terri S. Hogue,et al.  Evaluation of a MODIS-Based Potential Evapotranspiration Product at the Point Scale , 2008 .

[4]  Assefa M. Melesse,et al.  Estimation of spatially distributed surface energy fluxes using remotely‐sensed data for agricultural fields , 2005 .

[5]  Wim G.M. Bastiaanssen,et al.  Relating Crop Water Consumption to Irrigation Water Supply by Remote Sensing , 1997 .

[6]  Matthew F. McCabe,et al.  Modeling Evapotranspiration during SMACEX: Comparing Two Approaches for Local- and Regional-Scale Prediction , 2005 .

[7]  Richard G. Allen,et al.  Analytical integrated functions for daily solar radiation on slopes , 2006 .

[8]  Wilfried Brutsaert,et al.  Application of self‐preservation in the diurnal evolution of the surface energy budget to determine daily evaporation , 1992 .

[9]  Lucien Wald,et al.  Using remotely sensed solar radiation data for reference evapotranspiration estimation at a daily time step , 2008 .

[10]  Di Long,et al.  Intercomparison of remote sensing‐based models for estimation of evapotranspiration and accuracy assessment based on SWAT , 2008 .

[11]  H. L. Penman.  Natural evaporation from open water, bare soil and grass , 1948, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A. Mathematical and Physical Sciences.

[12]  Rezaul Mahmood,et al.  Effect of Time of Temperature Observation and Estimation of Daily Solar Radiation for the Northern Great Plains, USA , 2002 .

[13]  W. Bastiaanssen.  SEBAL-based sensible and latent heat fluxes in the irrigated Gediz Basin, Turkey , 2000 .

[14]  Ramakrishna R. Nemani,et al.  An operational remote sensing algorithm of land surface evaporation , 2003 .

[15]  S. Running,et al.  An improved algorithm for estimating incident daily solar radiation from measurements of temperature, humidity, and precipitation , 1999 .

[16]  Martha C. Anderson,et al.  GOES surface insolation to estimate wetlands evapotranspiration , 2002 .

[17]  Steven A. Margulis,et al.  High-resolution satellite-based cloud-coupled estimates of total downwelling surface radiation for hydrologic modelling applications. , 2009 .

[18]  Bhaskar J. Choudhury,et al.  Global Pattern of Potential Evaporation Calculated from the Penman-Monteith Equation Using Satellite and Assimilated Data , 1997 .

[19]  A. Salim Bawazir,et al.  Estimating Daily Net Radiation over Vegetation Canopy through Remote Sensing and Climatic Data , 2007 .

[20]  F. Anctil,et al.  Comparison of empirical daily surface incoming solar radiation models , 2008 .

[21]  R. Crago,et al.  Conservation and variability of the evaporative fraction during the daytime , 1996 .

[22]  L. S. Pereira,et al.  Crop evapotranspiration : guidelines for computing crop water requirements , 1998 .

[23]  Du Zheng,et al.  Radiation calibration of FAO56 Penman-Monteith model to estimate reference crop evapotranspiration in China , 2008 .

[24]  William P. Kustas,et al.  Daytime net radiation estimated for a semiarid rangeland basin from remotely sensed data , 1994 .

[25]  Y. Brunet,et al.  A simple model for estimating the daily upward longwave surface radiation flux from NOAA-AVHRR data , 1993 .

[26]  José A. Sobrino,et al.  Daily net radiation estimated from air temperature and NOAA-AVHRR data: A case study for the Iberian Peninsula , 2001 .

[27]  Z. Su.  The Surface Energy Balance System (SEBS) for estimation of turbulent heat fluxes , 2002 .

[28]  S. Islam,et al.  Estimation of surface evaporation map over Southern Great Plains using remote sensing data , 2001 .

[29]  Jeff Dozier,et al.  A generalized split-window algorithm for retrieving land-surface temperature from space , 1996, IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote. Sens..

[30]  Zhao-Liang Li,et al.  Estimation of daily actual evapotranspiration from remotely sensed data under complex terrain over the upper Chao river basin in North China , 2008 .

[31]  Peter E. Thornton,et al.  Simultaneous estimation of daily solar radiation and humidity from observed temperature and precipitation: an application over complex terrain in Austria. , 2000 .

[32]  H. Turral,et al.  Application of SEBAL approach and MODIS time-series to map vegetation water use patterns in the data scarce Krishna river basin of India. , 2006, Water science and technology : a journal of the International Association on Water Pollution Research.

[33]  S. Tyler,et al.  Spatial characterization of land surface energy fluxes and uncertainty estimation at the Salar de Atacama, Northern Chile , 2006 .

[34]  W. Brutsaert.  On a derivable formula for long-wave radiation from clear skies , 1975 .

[35]  Gautam Bisht,et al.  Estimation of the net radiation using MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) data for clear sky days , 2005 .

[36]  Alan H. Strahler,et al.  An algorithm for the retrieval of albedo from space using semiempirical BRDF models , 2000, IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote. Sens..

[37]  Matthew F. McCabe,et al.  Scale influences on the remote estimation of evapotranspiration using multiple satellite sensors , 2006 .

[38]  M. S. Moran,et al.  Using satellite remote sensing to extrapolate evapotranspiration estimates in time and space over a semiarid Rangeland basin , 1994 .

[39]  Ayse Irmak,et al.  Predicting Daily Net Radiation Using Minimum Climatological Data , 2003 .

[40]  S. Liang.  Quantitative Remote Sensing of Land Surfaces , 2003 .

[41]  J. Norman,et al.  Remote sensing of surface energy fluxes at 101‐m pixel resolutions , 2003 .

[42]  Gautam Bisht,et al.  Estimation and comparison of evapotranspiration from MODIS and AVHRR sensors for clear sky days over the Southern Great Plains , 2006 .

[43]  Zhao-Liang Li,et al.  A physics-based algorithm for retrieving land-surface emissivity and temperature from EOS/MODIS data , 1997, IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote. Sens..

[44]  Benjamin Y. H. Liu,et al.  The interrelationship and characteristic distribution of direct, diffuse and total solar radiation , 1960 .