Abstract This study evaluates global solar radiation measurements from the Meteosat-2 satellite, whose database is HelioClim-3 (HC-3), and reanalysis data (ERA5) against data from Côte d’Ivoire meteorological stations (DAVIS pyranometer) located in Boundiali, in the north, and Lamto weather station, in the center of the country. This assessment was also made for rainy days and days with Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) concentrations greater than or equal to 0.5. The results show that, on an hourly scale, global solar radiation data from HC-3 and ERA5 correlate well with in-situ measurements from weather stations. The correlation coefficients HC-3 and DAVIS data are 0.96 at Boundiali and 0.94 at Lamto. ERA5 data show slightly lower correlation coefficients at both sites (0.90 for Boundiali and 0.86 for Lamto), indicating a better agreement of HC-3 data with the DAVIS observations. The HC-3 data underestimate the GHI by 35.9 W m −2 at Boundiali and overestimate it by 43.8 W m −2 at Lamto compared with observed data. The ERA5 data also underestimate the GHI by 25.4 W m −2 at Boundiali and overestimate it by 46.7 W m −2 at Lamto, compared with observed data. The large RMSE and MBE values in Tables 1 and 2 highlight the difficulties encountered by satellites and ERA5 in estimating GHI in the presence of cloud cover. On the other hand, the impact of AOD concentrations on GHI measurement by satellites and ERA5 is negligible. Overall, the study concludes that HC-3 satellite data provide a more accurate representation of solar radiation in Côte d’Ivoire than ERA5 reanalysis data compared with ground-based observations.
Soro et al. (Thu,) studied this question.