Albedo of surface and cloudity determined through satellite observations

Abstract

Algorithms to find semi-empirical formulas of incident solar radiation were developed through collected data from eight meteorological stations located in different sites of Cartagena’s bay. To estimate cloudiness, terrestrial observations were compared with satellite imagines. Semi-empirical formula were developed to calculate cloudiness as a function of solar radiation and satellite albedo. These results were obtained to improve the ocean-atmosphere forecast system (Anduckia & Lonin, 2014) through the elimination of an error up to 20% in the calculations of incident solar radiation in traditional parameterizations widely employed in some numerical models.

Keywords

• albedo
• solar radiation
• cloudiness
• Cartagena Bay