Hourly photosynthetically active radiation estimation based on the combination of geostationary and polar orbital satellites

Photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) can be calculated by radiation transfer model. With the progress of remote sensing application, more and more input parameters could be inversed by remote sensing data. Then using these inversion parameters, the PAR could be estimated. The normal method estimation PAR by remote sensing data is using instantaneous value at the time of polar orbital satellite passing to accumulate the daily amount of PAR. However, daily cloud cover changes very obviously. PAR is always affected by atmospheric composition and cloud condition. So in this paper, the method which could combine geostationary and polar orbital satellite to improve PAR product time resolution is the main content. At last, MTSAT geostationary and MODIS polar orbital satellite are used to this method to estimate hourly PAR in whole China area.