Temporal Extrapolation of Daily Downward Shortwave Radiation Over Cloud-Free Rugged Terrains. Part 1: Analysis of Topographic Effects.

Estimation of daily downward shortwave radiation (DSR) is of great importance in global energy budget and climatic modeling. The combination of satellite-based instantaneous measurements and temporal extrapolation models is the most feasible way to capture daily radiation variations at large scales. However, previous studies did not pay enough attention to topographic effects and simple temporal extrapolation methods were applied directly to rugged terrains which cover a large amount of the land surface. This paper, divided into two parts, aims at analyzing the topographic uncertainties of existing models and proposing a better method based on a mountain radiative transfer (MRT) model to calculate daily DSR. As the first part, this paper analyze the spatiotemporal variations of DSR influenced by topographic effects and checks the applicability of three temporal extrapolation methods on cloud-free days. Considering that clouds also have a strong influence on solar radiation, cloud-free days are chosen for targeted analysis of topographic effects on DSR. Three indices, the coefficient of variation, entropy-based dispersion coefficient (CH), and sill of semivariogram, are put forward to give a quantitative description of spatial heterogeneity. Our results show that the topography can dramatically strengthen the spatial heterogeneity of DSR. The index, CH, has an advantage for quantifying spatial heterogeneity as it offers a tradeoff between accuracy and efficiency. Spatial heterogeneity distorts the daily variation of DSR. Application of extrapolation methods in rugged terrains leads to overestimation of daily average DSR up to 60 W/m2 and a maximum 200 W/m2 error of instantaneous DSR on cloud-free days. This paper makes a quantitative analysis of topographic effects under different spatiotemporal conditions, which lays the foundation for developing a new extrapolation method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]