A Flexible and Effective Method to Integrate the Satellite-Based AOD Data into WRF-Solar Model for GHI Simulation

This work evaluates the reliability of the short-range forecast of global horizontal irradiance (GHI) simulated by WRF-Solar over Indian region and further to analyze the effect of ingested satellite-based aerosols data into the WRF-Solar model. For this purpose, two experiments with WRF-Solar were designed one with default aerosol data and the second one after the inclusion of satellite-based aerosol data in the WRF-Solar. The evaluation of the model simulations was carried out during diverse periods of the year for distinctive sky conditions, viz. clear and cloudy. WRF-Solar simulations have been evaluated against the ground data collected at nine stations, located in different climatic zones of the study region. The aim of the present study is to analyze the model capability in simulating GHI by furnishing the model with a system to ingest both high-temporal and high-spatial-resolution aerosol data. It is noted that ingesting of the satellite-based aerosol data in WRF-Solar results in a decrease in the systematic bias caused by any deception of the aerosol optical properties and their spatiotemporal variability. Based on the comparison of the simulated data set with the ground-based observations, it is noted that WRF-Solar model after inclusion of aerosols data is able to forecast reasonably well under clear sky conditions over the different time periods of the year. However, for the cloudy condition, the model was able to accurately forecast steep changes in the sky conditions. The relative improvement after inclusion of aerosol data in comparison with WRF-Solar with default climatological value ranges from 3 to 24%. The present work has implications for improved forecasting of solar parameters over the Indian region.