Detection and assessment of the amount of cumuliform clouds from global horizontal irradiance
S.V. Zuev, S.Yu. Zolotov
Institute of Monitoring of Climatic and Ecological Systems of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Tomsk, Russia
Keywords: cloud cover, global horizontal irradiance, cloud amount, monitoring
Abstract
Method for detecting most forms of altocumulus, stratocumulus, and cumulus clouds and their middle (4-7) and high (8-10) amount is proposed. The method is based on statistical analysis of continuous series of measured global horizontal irradiance. Clouds are classified into two classes according to their influence on the heterogeneity of the formed series. The analysis uses the coefficient of variation and the range of sample. Testing of the method showed that cumuliform clouds are detected with accuracy of 94% at sample completeness of 63%, and the cloud amount is assessed with an error of less than 21%.
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