Assessment of Atmospheric Limitations on the Determination of the Solar Spectral Constant from Ground-Based Spectroradiometer Measurements

Ground-based solar radiometer measurements have long been used to investigate various properties of both the Earth's atmosphere and the sun. This paper addresses the problem of attempting to measure the solar spectral irradiance with heretofore unachieved levels of accuracy and precision (~0.5 and ~0.1 percent, respectively) via spectroradiometer measurements made at high-altitude ground stations. Instrumentation and calibration approaches are discussed, but attention is primarily directed toward assessing limitations imposed by the atmosphere. Assessments of factors such as diffuse light contributions, uncertainty in airmass determination, variability in atmospheric optical depth, spectroradiometer bandwidth, and data analysis methods are included in the paper.