Estimation of Daily Sunshine Duration from Terra and Aqua MODIS Data

Some studies have shown that the estimation of global sunshine duration can be done with the help of geostationary satellites because they can record several images of the same location in a day. In this paper, images obtained from the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) sensors of polar orbiting satellites Aqua and Terra were used to estimate daily global sunshine duration for any region in Turkey. A new quadratic correlation between daily mean cloud cover index and relative sunshine duration was also introduced and compared with the linear correlation. Results have shown that polar orbiting satellites can be used for the estimation of sunshine duration. The quadratic model introduced here works better than the linear model especially for the winter months in which very low sunshine duration values were recorded at the ground stations for many days.

[1]  Kinsell L. Coulson,et al.  Solar and Terrestrial Radiation: Methods and Measurements , 1975 .

[2]  W. Beckman,et al.  Solar Engineering of Thermal Processes , 1985 .

[3]  H. Guillard,et al.  A method for the determination of the global solar radiation from meteorological satellite data , 1986 .

[4]  Lucien Wald,et al.  Solar radiation climate in Africa , 2004 .

[5]  José María Baldasano,et al.  Solar Radiation Mapping from NOAA AVHRR Data in Catalonia, Spain , 2001 .

[6]  Y. Kerr,et al.  Satellite Estimation of Solar Irradiance at the Surface of the Earth and of Surface Albedo Using a Physical Model Applied to Metcosat Data , 1987 .

[7]  A. Angstroem.  Solar and terrestrial radiation , 1924 .

[8]  S. M. Robaa,et al.  Evaluation of sunshine duration from cloud data in Egypt , 2008 .

[9]  Estimating daily sunshine duration over Belgium by combination of station and satellite data , 2013 .

[10]  C. Gautier,et al.  A Simple Physical Model to Estimate Incident Solar Radiation at the Surface from GOES Satellite Data , 1980 .

[11]  A. Kossentini,et al.  Daily and hourly global irradiations in Tunisia extracted from Meteosat Wefax images , 1996 .

[12]  D. Chant,et al.  Long-term trends in sunshine duration and its association with schizophrenia birth rates and age at first registration — data from Australia and the Netherlands , 2002, Schizophrenia Research.

[13]  H. M. Kandırmaz.  A model for the estimation of the daily global sunshine duration from meteorological geostationary satellite data , 2006 .

[14]  Serm Janjai,et al.  Estimation of solar radiation over Cambodia from long-term satellite data , 2011 .

[15]  A. Angstrom.  Solar and terrestrial radiation. Report to the international commission for solar research on actinometric investigations of solar and atmospheric radiation , 2007 .

[16]  Andreas Matzarakis,et al.  Weather impacts on respiratory infections in Athens, Greece , 2006, International journal of biometeorology.

[17]  X. Yin.  Bright Sunshine Duration in Relation to Precipitation,Air Temperature and Geographic Location , 1999 .

[18]  R.H.B. Exell,et al.  Solar radiation mapping from satellite image using a low cost system , 1996 .

[19]  Elizabeth Good,et al.  Estimating daily sunshine duration over the UK from geostationary satellite data , 2010 .

[20]  J. D. Tarpley.  Estimating Incident Solar Radiation at the Surface from Geostationary Satellite Data , 1979 .

[21]  Michele Brunetti,et al.  Dimming/brightening over the Iberian Peninsula: Trends in sunshine duration and cloud cover and their relations with atmospheric circulation , 2009 .

[22]  M. S. Swaminathan,et al.  Computation of solar radiation from observations of cloud cover , 1984 .

[23]  H. M. Kandırmaz,et al.  Daily global solar radiation mapping of Turkey using Meteosat satellite data , 2004 .

[24]  M. Rebetez,et al.  Changes in sunshine duration are correlated with changes in daily temperature range this century: An analysis of Swiss climatological data , 1998 .

[25]  M. A. Shamim,et al.  An improved technique for global daily sunshine duration estimation using satellite imagery , 2012, Journal of Zhejiang University SCIENCE A.

[26]  Dorota Matuszko.  Influence of cloudiness on sunshine duration , 2012 .

[27]  B. Aksoy.  Variations and trends in global solar radiation for Turkey , 1997 .