Selection of different Extraterrestrial Solar Spectral Irradiance datasets and its effects on Mean Solar Exoatmospheric Irradiance

Abstract

Extraterrestrial Solar Spectral Irradiance (ESSI) is an important parameter for calculating Mean Solar Exoatmospheric Irradiance (MSEI) of each band for a given satellite. In order to find optimal ESSI dataset for calculation of MSEI, 5 ESSI datasets from MODTRAN4.0 software and ESSI dataset simulated by Santa Barbara DISORT Atmospheric Radiative Transfer (SBDART) tool were selected to compute MSEI of each band for HJ-1A CCD1, CEBERS02 CCD, Landsat TM5(band1~band4) and ASTER(band1~band9). Comparisons between the calculated MSEI and the published MSEI were made. It is found that ESSI dataset simulated by SBDART tool and MODTRAN oldkur.dat dataset are best suitable for calculation of MSEI and the MSEI results are consistent with published MSEI. There are big errors using thkur.dat and newkur.dat datasets to compute MSEI for these satellites, so that they are not recommended to calculate MSEI for given satellites.