Solar irradiance determination by using ATSR-2 data

Three physical methods were used to determine solar irradiance by using ERS ATSR-2 data. The schemes were applied to the land and sea areas. The visible and near-infrared reflectance were derived from ERS-2 ATSR-2 spectral bands by using atmospheric radiative transfer model developed by Xue and Cracknell. The narrow-band reflectances are combined into a measure of surface albedo by use of a weighted averaged scheme. The schemes were applied to the land and sea areas. The three schemes are agreement very well each other. All three schemes can also be developed to determine the hourly or daily solar irradiance. However, the authors' current analysis is restricted to a small range of conditions and needs to be extended to a larger dataset.