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Estimation of hourly and daily ultraviolet solar irradiation under various sky conditions at Sanya, Southern China

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Abstract

Total ultraviolet (UV) irradiation (290–400 nm) observed at Sanya (SY, 109°28′E, 18°13′N), China during 2005–2012 was used to investigate UV variability and its relationship with global solar radiation under various sky conditions in Southern China for the first time. Monthly mean daily UV irradiation generally increased from 0.585 MJ m−2 in December to 0.965 MJ m−2 in July with annual mean value being about 0.767 MJ m−2. Monthly mean daily F UV (ratio of UV to G) changed from 4.19 % in December to 4.68 % in July with annual mean being about 4.45 % at SY, China. By analyzing the dependences of hourly UV irradiation on optical air mass, clearness index, and cosine of solar zenith angle, respectively, under various sky conditions, three different UV estimation equations have been introduced and validated at SY, Inner Mongolia, and Lhasa. The statistical results indicated that estimation Eq. 3 (based on clearness index and cosine of solar zenith angle) produced the most satisfied estimates at Sanya: mean bias error, mean absolute bias error, and root-mean-square error were only −0.72 % (−0.23 %), 4.67 % (4.45 %), and 6.43 % (5.88 %), respectively, at hourly (daily) basis. Hourly and daily UV irradiation during 1992–2012 were then reconstructed, it was discovered that UV irradiation increased slightly during the study period and the most significant increases (0.904 MJ m−2 day−1 decade−1) were observed in summer.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by National Basic Research Program (2011CB707106) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (No. 41127901). We would like to thank the Chinese Ecosystem Research Network for providing the observation data. The global solar radiation from 1990 to 2011 used in this study was obtained from National Meteorological Center/CMA, which was highly appreciated by the authors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Northwest Regional Climate Center, Gansu Meteorological Bureau, Lanzhou, 730020, China

    Lan Feng

  2. School of Resource and Environmental Science, Wuhan University, Wuhan, Hubei Province, 430079, China

    Lan Feng & Aiwen Lin

  3. State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan University, Wuhan, Hubei Province, China

    Lunche Wang & Wei Gong

  4. State Key Laboratory of Atmospheric Boundary Layer Physics and Atmospheric Chemistry, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China

    Bo Hu

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  1. Lan Feng
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  2. Lunche Wang
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  4. Aiwen Lin
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  5. Bo Hu
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Correspondence to Lunche Wang.

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Feng, L., Wang, L., Gong, W. et al. Estimation of hourly and daily ultraviolet solar irradiation under various sky conditions at Sanya, Southern China. Theor Appl Climatol 121, 187–198 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-014-1239-3

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