Could the "incoming solar radiation" values be negative?
What is the difference between "global solar radiation" and "incoming solar radiation"?
Which one might be measured negative values?
In instrument design, the sensor output from zero is "mapped" over a range of 0 - 1000W/m². Sensor linearity is essential to having good instrument. Thus, a negative value is outside response mapping. A zero value could be expected; a negative value might likely be a result of an error either from poor calibration or sensor malfunction.
Dear Lanre Daniyan,
Thanks for your response. You are right, and I agree with you but in my study area (Arctic) I have seen negative values in "incoming solar radiation” regularly. It seems they are sensible values! Because the negative values exist in first two months and last two months of each year.
Please check the attached figure. This is incoming solar radiation for one year, What justification can cover this issue?
Incoming solar radiation is either zero or positive values. The negative incoming solar radiation values figures above might be due to calibration error or instrument malfunction.
Dear K. Rasheed ,
Thank you for your suggestion. They have repeated each year. Negative values do not appear to be in error!
At night essentially anywhere on Earth, incoming solar is much lower than outgoing IR. By one measure, the net radiation energy level there is negative.
Over what energy range is your instrument sensitive?
Could it be registering radiation from solar/cosmic energetic particle interactions?
Such nuclear interactions can produce visible light around reactors.
By definition, incoming (to Earth) solar radiation cannot be negative, as others have said. And photons from the sun (I suppose we're taking about electromagnetic radiation) are indistinguishable from those from any other source, so far as I know. So to measure "solar radiation" you just have to measure "radiation", and infer something about its source, somehow. How were your data taken? For example, if they represent the net radiation (that arriving from space less emissions and albedo from Earth, in some waveband) you might expect a data set like that you show, with outgoing radiation exceeding incoming during the polar winter, and you might choose to call it, loosely, "incoming solar radiation".
If you could say what the source of the data is, that would help others to help you to understand it.
Dear Babak Mohammadi ,
Negative solar radiation values are meaningless.
It would be zero and not negative.
Regards,
Wiltgen
Dear Babak,
What are the axes and scales of the figure which you have shown?
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