Relationship between net radiation and solar radiation for semi-arid shrub-land

This paper presents the results obtained by analysing a set of measurements of surface radiation balance components at a semi-arid location in SE Spain. The relationships between net and surface shortwave radiation were explored by using 38 months of 5 min surface radiation. The study area is covered by sparse clumped shrub-land of different species, although close to the radiometric station Retama sphaerocarpa is dominant. After this study, it is evident that a single model based on surface shortwave radiation could provide appropriate estimates. The inclusion of albedo information provides a slight improvement on the estimation model. The use of seasonal models provides an appreciable improvement, while the benefits of including cloud information are only marginal.