Effects in AtmosphereIn various layers of the atmosphere, the sun light gets reflected back outside, absorbed and scattered. As a result, the radiation that hits a horizontal surface on the earth is
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Clear sky at sea level |
0.6 – 0.8 |
Cloudy |
0.1 – 0.3 |
Around 18% of the extraterrestrial radiation is absorbed or reflected back. Higher latitudes experience lower values, as the path through the atmosphere under a larger zenith angle is much longer.
The clarity index is usually either daily or hourly to average out short-term fluctuations. It is assumed that clouds are uniformly distributed over the sky. Drifting clouds are not considered in this technique.
Diffusion
Direct beam radiation is one which strikes the surface from one angle only, directly from the sun. Conversely, diffuse light, as a result of absorption and scattering, approaches the horizontal surface from almost any angle. It can therefore not be focused or concentrated.
The global hourly irradiance on a surface can be expressed as the sum of direct (beam) and diffuse radiation as:
Similar to the clearness index, the diffusion index is defined as
The beam fraction is 1 – KD.
We have plotted diffuse and direct irradiance for various locations - sorted by the diffusion index. The places with lowest diffusion are Mercury Desert Rock in America and Omaruru in Namibia whilst in Northern Europe and Singapore the diffuse component is bigger than the direct beam.
