Estimation of the net radiation using MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) data for clear sky days

A simple scheme is proposed to estimate instantaneous net radiation over large heterogeneous areas for clear sky days using only remote sensing observations. Our method attempts to develop an algorithm which primarily uses remote sensing information and eliminates the need for ground information as model input, by using various land and atmospheric data products available from Terra–MODIS. It explicitly recognizes the need for spatially varied parameters and provides a distributed net radiation map over large heterogeneous domain with fine spatial resolution. Since instantaneous net radiation estimates have limited scope compared to daily average values or diurnal cycle, a sinusoidal model is proposed to estimate diurnal cycle of net radiation. The sinusoidal model is capable of retrieving the diurnal variations of net radiation with a single instantaneous net radiation estimate from the satellite. Preliminary results, using data over Southern Great Plains, show good agreement with ground-based observations. It appears that the methodology presented here can estimate instantaneous and daily net radiation with comparable accuracy to those of current methods that use ground-based observations and mainly provide point estimates.