The atmospheric aerosols and their direct radiative effects play an essential role on the variability of solar resources on the earth’s surface and, consequently, solar energy potential production, especially in the proximity of aerosol anthropogenic and natural sources. In this work, we investigate the direct impact of total and dust aerosols on two different downwelling surface solar irradiance (DSSI) components, the Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI) and Direct Normal Irradiance (DNI), under clear-sky conditions and their implications on solar energy. The study focuses on the broader Mediterranean Basin, over a 18-year time period, between 2003 and 2020. In this framework, various studies using total aerosol and dust optical depth (AOD and DOD, respectively) from the satellite-derived ModIs Dust AeroSol (MIDAS) and the model based from the Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service (CAMS) have been appeared in the literature. In this study we use ground-based measurements from the AErosol RObotic NETwork (AERONET) to assess results from the aforementioned datasets/studies. Based on the retrievals of aerosol optical properties from the ground-based measurements, a sensitivity analysis was performed to determine the dependence of the GHI and DNI from aerosol optical properties variability using different time scales and aerosol inputs/datasets with different spatiotemporal resolution. Finally, deviations of the total aerosols/dust effects on DSSI resulting from three datasets (satellite, CAMS, ground-based) are presented and discussed and the reasons of such deviations are presented. The importance of this research lies in the fact that understanding the sensitivity of solar energy applications to the spatiotemporal variability of aerosols and dust, is vital for a sustainable energy transition, energy planning and the efficiency of current and future solar energy related investments.
How to cite: Kouklaki, D., Papachristopoulou, K., Fountoulakis, I., Raptis, I.-P., Kazadzis, S., and Eleftheratos, K.: Direct effect of Aerosols on Surface Solar Radiation (GHI and DNI) for Solar Energy: sensitivity study using CAMS, satellite-based and ground-based measurements, EMS Annual Meeting 2022, Bonn, Germany, 5–9 Sep 2022, EMS2022-400, https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2022-400, 2022.
