Calculating Solar Irradiance

[Gabriel López]

Dear DART members,

I'm new to the DART. I'm currently working in calculating broadband (0.28-4 microm) direct, diffuse and total solar irradiance on a 1 m² horizontal surface (at any time of day). I would like to ask you for guidance on how to perform this calculation using DART, given specific values of water vapor and aerosol optical depth (AOD), and assuming the USSA 1971 atmospheric profile.

Could you please let me know which parameters or input files I need to configure to achieve this? Any documentation or examples you could point me to would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much for your time and support.

Best regards,

Gabriel

[Yingjie Wang]

Dear Gabriel,

To compute the broadband solar irradiance with better precision, I suggest you to add a series of spectral bands from 0.28 to 4 micrometer and integrate the final results at the end of the simulation. Right click on the label Spectral intervals allows you to create a series of spectral bands. The defaut atmosphere model is USSTD1972 in DART. We does not provide the version 1971 but the difference will be small. All atmospheric parameters are configured in the atmosphere menu. You can define the water vapor through label water vapour amount and define the aerosol optical depth through the sub-menu aerosol. 

More detail can be find in DART user manual through the documentation of DART website.

Best,

Yingjie Wang

[Gabriel López]

Dear Yingjie,

Thank you very much for your quick response. That answers the question. My error was I was looking for a box that would provide the broadband irradiance in that spectral interval. I'll follow your instructions.

best wishes

Gabriel