Articles | Volume 12, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/asr-12-5-2015
https://doi.org/10.5194/asr-12-5-2015
18 Feb 2015
 | 18 Feb 2015

Estimating the photosynthetically active radiation under clear skies by means of a new approach

W. Wandji Nyamsi, B. Espinar, P. Blanc, and L. Wald

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Technical Note: A novel parameterization of the transmissivity due to ozone absorption in the k-distribution method and correlated-k approximation of Kato et al. (1999) over the UV band
W. Wandji Nyamsi, A. Arola, P. Blanc, A. V. Lindfors, V. Cesnulyte, M. R. A. Pitkänen, and L. Wald
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 15, 7449–7456, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-15-7449-2015,https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-15-7449-2015, 2015
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Cited articles

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Jacovides, C. P., Timvios, F. S., Papaioannou, G., Asimakopoulos, D. N., and Theofilou, C. M.: Ratio of PAR to broadband solar radiation measured in Cyprus, Agr. Forest. Meteorol., 121, 135–140, 2004.
Kato, S., Ackerman, T., Mather, J., and Clothiaux, E.: The k-distribution method and correlated-k approximation for shortwave radiative transfer model, J. Quant. Spectrosc. Ra., 62, 109–121, 1999.
Lefèvre, M., Oumbe, A., Blanc, P., Espinar, B., Gschwind, B., Qu, Z., Wald, L., Schroedter-Homscheidt, M., Hoyer-Klick, C., Arola, A., Benedetti, A., Kaiser, J. W., and Morcrette, J.-J.: McClear: a new model estimating downwelling solar radiation at ground level in clear-sky conditions, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 6, 2403–2418, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-6-2403-2013, 2013.
Mayer, B. and Kylling, A.: Technical note: The libRadtran software package for radiative transfer calculations – description and examples of use, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 5, 1855–1877, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-5-1855-2005, 2005.
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Short summary
We propose an innovative method to estimate the Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR) under clear sky conditions derived from the fast approach of Kato et al. (1999). It provides very good results better than the two state-of-the-art empirical methods computing the daily mean of PAR from the daily mean of total irradiance. In addition, this technique may be extended to be able to accurately estimate other spectral quantities taking into account absorption of plants photosynthetic pigments.