• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.232-237
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• 2010

While global solar radiation is an essential input variable in crop models, the observation stations are relatively sparse compared with other meteorological elements. Instead of using measured solar radiation, the Angstrom-Prescott model estimates have been widely used. Monthly data for solar radiation and sunshine duration are a convenient basis for deriving Angstrom-Prescott coefficients (a, b), but it is uncertain whether daily solar radiation could be estimated with a sufficient accuracy by the monthly data - derived coefficients. We derived the Angstrom-Prescott coefficients from the 25 years observed global solar radiation and sunshine duration data at 18 locations across South Korea. In order to figure out any improvements in estimating daily solar radiation by replacing monthly data with daily data, the coefficients (a, b) for each month were derived separately from daily data and monthly data. Local coefficients for eight validation sites were extracted from the spatially interpolated maps of the coefficients and used to estimate daily solar radiation from September 2008 to August 2009 when, pyranometers were operated at the same sites for validation purpose. Comparison with the measured radiation showed a better performance of the daily data - derived coefficients in estimating daily global solar radiation than the monthly data - derived coefficients, showing 9.3% decrease in the root mean square error (RMSE).

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.221-232
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• 2016

Models to estimate solar radiation have been used because solar radiation is measured at a smaller number of weather stations than other variables including temperature and rainfall. For example, solar radiation has been estimated using the Angstrom-Prescott (AP) model that depends on two coefficients obtained empirically at a specific site ($AP_{Choi}$) or for a climate zone ($AP_{Frere}$). The objective of this study was to identify the coefficients of the AP model for reliable estimation of solar radiation under a wide range of spatial and temporal conditions. A global optimization was performed for a range of AP coefficients to identify the values of $AP_{max}$ that resulted in the greatest degree of agreement at each of 20 sites for a given month during 30 years. The degree of agreement was assessed using the value of Concordance Correlation Coefficient (CCC). When $AP_{Frere}$ was used to estimate solar radiation, the values of CCC were relatively high for conditions under which crop growth simulation would be performed, e.g., at rural sites during summer. The statistics for $AP_{Frere}$ were greater than those for $AP_{Choi}$ although $AP_{Frere}$ had the smaller statistics than $AP_{max}$ did. The variation of CCC values was small over a wide range of AP coefficients when those statistics were summarized by site. $AP_{Frere}$ was included in each range of AP coefficients that resulted in reasonable accuracy of solar radiation estimates by site, year, and month. These results suggested that $AP_{Frere}$ would be useful to provide estimates of solar radiation as an input to crop models in Korea. Further studies would be merited to examine feasibility of using $AP_{Frere}$ to obtain gridded estimates of solar radiation at a high spatial resolution under a complex terrain in Korea.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.256-266
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• 2022

Empirical models including the Angstrom-Prescott (AP) model have been used to estimate solar radiation at sites, which would support a wide use of crop models. The objective of this study was to estimate two sets of solar radiation estimates using the AP coefficients derived for climate zone (AP_Frere) and specific site (AP_Choi), respectively. The daily solar radiation was estimated at 18 sites in Korea where long-term measurements of solar radiation were available. In the present study, daily solar radiation and sunshine duration were collected for the period from 2012 to 2021. Daily weather data including maximum and minimum temperatures and rainfall were also obtained to prepare input data to a process-based crop model, CERES-Rice model included in Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT). It was found that the daily estimates of solar radiation using the climate zone specific coefficient, SFrere, had significantly less error than those using site-specific coefficients S_Choi (p<0.05). The cumulative values of S_Frere for the period from march to September also had less error at 55% of study sites than those of S_Choi. Still, the use of S_Frere and S_Choi as inputs to the CERES-Rice model resulted in slight differences between the outcomes of crop growth simulations, which had no significant difference between these outputs. These results suggested that the AP coefficients for the temperate climate zone would be preferable for the estimation of solar radiation. This merits further evaluation studies to compare the AP model with other sophisticated approaches such as models based on satellite data.