Theoretical and Applied Climatology

, Volume 115, Issue 1–2, pp 197–205 | Cite as

A simplified calibrated model for estimating daily global solar radiation in Madinah, Saudi Arabia

Original Paper
First Online:
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Accepted:

Abstract

Solar radiation is the most important parameter in defining the energy budget at the surface thereby influencing the hydroclimate. Several empirical models based on air temperature are developed and used in several decision-making needs such as agriculture and energy sector. However, a calibration against direct observations is a priori for implementing such models. A calibrated model is developed for Saudi Arabia (Madinah) based on observations during 2007–2011. The model \( \left( {\mathrm{Rs}=A+B\cdot \mathrm{R}{{\mathrm{s}}_0}{{{\left( {{T_{\max }}-{T_{\min }}} \right)}}^C}} \right) \) is used to estimate daily solar radiation and results show a correlation coefficient of 0.94. The calibrated model outperforms the uncalibrated model available for this location. To increase the confidence, the calibrated model is also compared with a simple artificial neural network.

Keywords

Solar Radiation Root Mean Square Error Saudi Arabia Mean Absolute Error Empirical Coefficient 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Notes

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank all the staff of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste (Italy) for providing materials and the computer facilities for achieving the present work.

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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag Wien 2013

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of Physics, Faculty of ScienceTaibah UniversityMadinahSaudi Arabia
  2. 2.Faculty of Science and Technology, Renewable Energy LaboratoryJijel UniversityJijelAlgeria
  3. 3.International Centre of Theoretical Physics (ICTP)TriesteItaly

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