edu.ucar.opensky::articles:25493 UCAR/NCAR - Library OpenSky Support PO Box 3000 Boulder CO 80307-3000 opensky@ucar.edu http://opensky.ucar.edu/ homepage pointOfContact 2025-12-24T22:51:49.387517 ISO 19115-2 Geographic Information - Metadata - Part 2: Extensions for Imagery and Gridded Data ISO 19115-2:2009(E) https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d76h4n5s https://doi.org/10.5065/yvdr-pa90 https Related Dataset #1 Global horizontal irradiance from WRF-Solar and NSRDB over CONUS https://doi.org/10.5065/D6RX99HX https Related Service #1 Cheyenne: SGI ICE XA Cluster Assessing the WRF-Solar model performance using satellite-derived irradiance from the National Solar Radiation Database 2022-02-01T00:00:00Z publication https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d76h4n5s https://doi.org/10.1175/JAMC-D-21-0090.1 Jiménez Munoz, Pedro A. author Yang, J. author Kim, Ju-Hye author Sengupta, M. author Dudhia, Jimy author UCAR/NCAR - Library publisher WRF-Solar is a numerical weather prediction model specifically designed to meet the increasing demand for accurate solar irradiance forecasting. The model provides flexibility in the representation of the aerosol-cloud-radiation processes. This flexibility can be argued to make it more difficult to improve the model's performance because of the necessity of inspecting different configurations. To alleviate this situation, WRF-Solar has a reference configuration to use as a benchmark in sensitivity experiments. However, the scarcity of high-quality ground observations is a handicap to accurately quantify the model performance. An alternative to ground observations are satellite irradiance retrievals. Herein we analyze the adequacy of the National Solar Radiation Database (NSRDB) to validate the WRF-Solar performance using high-quality global horizontal irradiance (GHI) observations across the contiguous United States (CONUS). Based on the sufficient performance of NSRDB, we further analyze the WRF-Solar forecast errors across the CONUS, the growth of the forecasting errors as a function of the lead time, and sensitivities to the grid spacing and the representation of the radiative effects of unresolved clouds. Our results based on WRF-Solar forecasts spanning 2018 reveal a 7% median degradation of the mean absolute error (MAE) from the first to the second daytime period. Reducing the grid spacing from 9 to 3 km leads to a 4% improvement in the MAE, whereas activating the radiative effects of unresolved clouds is desirable over most of the CONUS even at 3 km of grid spacing. A systematic overestimation of the GHI is found. These results illustrate the potential of GHI retrievals to contribute to increasing theWRF-Solar performance. UCAR/NCAR - Library OpenSky Support PO Box 3000 Boulder CO 80307-3000 opensky@ucar.edu http://opensky.ucar.edu/ homepage pointOfContact PDF Text theme Resource Type 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z publication Copyright 2022 American Meteorological Society. None eng geoscientificInformation