Quantitative effects of PM concentrations on spectral distribution of global normal irradiance
Graphical abstract
Introduction
The variation of the solar radiation directly or indirectly affects numerous meteorological conditions and biological processes on Earth. Such resource is constantly valuable, clean, and abundant in most places (Kreider and Kreith, 1981), and it is available on the earth’s surface (Leckner, 1978) for beneficial applications, particularly in the building sector that accounts for over one-third of total energy consumptions in most countries worldwide (Pérez et al., 2008).
The daylight through the building envelope refers to a major element that affects buildings’ energy performance and occupant’s thermal comfort for its radiometric features (La Gennusa et al., 2007). The solar radiation on building envelope is critical to assessing the active and passive energy-saving practices (Xie et al., 2017). However, the daylight through the windows and skylights specifically affects the occupants’ visual comfort (Xue et al., 2014) and non-visual effect (Dai et al., 2017) (e.g., circadian rhythms (Rea and Figueiro, 2018)). In photometric features, it is generally known to be able to affect physical, physiological (Xue et al., 2016) and psychological characteristics (Vetter et al., 2011). Thus, researchers and residents increasingly focus on the solar radiation.
The solar radiation acts as a vital factor in indoor thermal and luminous environment with photometry and radiometry. It is also noticeably known that the irradiance (Gueymard, 2004) and illuminance (Gueymard, 2008) are the physical parameters commonly adopted to represent the features of solar radiation; they are both calculated based on the spectral power distribution of global irradiance (abbreviated as SPD) (Chain et al., 1999), which has been a hotspot in the built environment with extensive studies.
As fueled by the advancement of building materials technology (Cuce and Riffat, 2015), the spectral selectivity and active control of solar radiation transmittance (Gueymard, 2009) and absorptance (Moreno and Hernández, 2018) have been more complicated. The SPD will affect the building cooling load (Gueymard and Thevenard, 2009) with the different transmittance on different wavelengths, especially in the application of photovoltaic technologies (Nazeeruddin et al., 2011) as well as the calculation for glazing’s secondary heat transfer (Piccolo et al., 2018). Except for radiometry features, SPD values also create a specific daylighting environment and determine the color rendering index (CRI) (Aste et al., 2015), correlated color temperature (CCT) (Ghosh et al., 2018), and luminous intensity (Bellia et al., 2011) for the building environment in photometry features. However, atmospheric turbidity is a main parameter controlling the attenuation of spectral distribution of global irradiance reaching the Earth’s surface under cloudless sky conditions (Gueymard and Garrison, 1998). Its reduction mechanism results both from the scattering of daylight by tiny particles suspended in the air (e.g., water droplets, dust, and particulate matters) and from the absorption of daylight by water vapor and carbon dioxide (Lopez and Batlles, 2004). In the studies of the relation between SPD and atmospheric turbidity, some researchers have been paying more attention to the scattering effects of PM (Fig. 1.) on solar spectrum in the atmosphere (Chaâbane et al., 2004).
In recent years, the world has witnessed China’s rapid economic and industrial development, which has triggered tremendous rises in energy consumptions (Ebohon, 1996) and emissions of air pollutants (Zhao et al., 2015). Air pollution originates from multiple sources (Guo et al., 2020), and it has imposed progressively serious effects on public human health (Löndahl et al., 2010). As revealed from the data harvested from the air quality monitoring stations in 338 cities in China, the annual average concentrations of the PM2.5 (cutoff sizes ≤ 2.5 m) ranged from 11 to 125 g/m3 in 2015 and from 12 to 158 g/m3 in 2016 with an annual average value of 50 and 47 g/m3, respectively and the PM was the primary pollutants for over 80.3% of the days with huge pollution (Lin et al., 2018). It has been concluded that the particulate matter (PM), especially PM2.5, refers to the primary pollutant in most cities and adversely affects public health for the energy-consumed structure that the fossil resources are still applied in China extensively (Wu et al., 2015).
Given the critical impact of the solar spectrum on the built environment and the scattering effects of PM, the outdoor SPD values should be studied under a range of PM concentrations. However, since the relation between PM levels and SPD has been rarely studied, the following review will only present the investigations for solar radiation with the effects of PM concentrations.
In studies on the relation between solar radiation and PM values, the scattering of direct solar radiation should be primarily considered (Ladjevardi et al. 2013). Yang et al. (2016) measured direction solar radiation at various PM concentrations; they reported that PM values significantly affected the direct solar radiation available at the surface in China. Haywood et al. (1997) suggested that the rising atmospheric pollution, especially anthropogenic particulate matter, has split sunlight into scattering light and reduced direct surface solar radiation. Other researchers found that various additional indexes that can present the attenuation of solar radiation. Based on solar radiation and PM data measured in Beijing, Yao et al. (2017) built novel daily diffuse solar radiation models. Zhao et al. (2013) statistically analyzed the relations between visibility and PM concentrations in northeast China; as revealed from their results, the PM noticeably affected visibility and solar radiation.
The effects of PM values on solar radiation have been investigated based on the aforementioned studies. However, solar radiation is affected not only by the scattering of particulate matter, but also by other factors. Consequently, considerable researchers have begun to accurately analyze the effect of PM values on solar radiation under complex conditions. Furlan C et al. (2012) assessed the surface hourly values of diffuse solar radiation with PM concentrations considering the effects of clouds. Galindo et al. (2011) measured daily concentrations of PM1, PM2.5, PM10 with solar radiation and other meteorological parameters (e.g., wind speed and rainfall rate). Liu et al. (2015) developed a model that considers air pollution, temperature, humidity, and wind speed data; they concluded that PM in the atmosphere displayed a robust linear correlation with solar radiation.
Given our review of the literature, the analysis was based on the data of monitoring solar radiation and PM concentrations. Accordingly, some statistical models were adopted to effectively conduct the study. To delve into the scattering effects of PM on solar radiation simplifying the effects of clouds, moisture, and other atmospheric factors, Liou et al. (2002) yielded the radiative equation with the numerical solution. Furlan C et al. (2012) presented a novel regression model based on clearness index and diffuse fraction to assess territory diffuse solar radiation with PM values considering conventional meteorological variables, and its assessing results were better than the developed ones. In addition to the mentioned parametric models, several non-parametric models were also applied. Sun et al. (2016) exploited meteorological and solar radiation data to develop random forest models for estimation of solar radiation. Vakili et al. (2017) illustrated that using novel methods (e.g., Artificial Neural Network modeling) can enable researchers to make more accurate predictions in solar radiation. Fan et al. (2018) proposed a method by considering seven single air pollution parameters and 15 combinations of two parameters with Support Vector Machine; as revealed from their results, the PM2.5 was the most relevant air pollution parameter for diffuse solar radiation.
In the development of building façade energy-efficient design and daylighting conditions, solar radiation acts as a crucial factor for researchers and residents. While SPDs’ values more significantly affect our indoor environment for the complexity in spectral selectivity based on the emerging glazing. Numerous existing studies analyzed the relation between PM concentrations and solar radiation, whereas the effects of PM values on SPD have been rarely studied.
This paper elucidates the relation between PM concentrations and SPD based on the experiments conducted in Beijing. The indication with PM concentration on the solar spectrum will vary. To be specific, 1) the difference between global horizontal irradiance (GHI) and global normal irradiance (GNI) measurement is demonstrated; 2) the stronger relation, PM concentrations with irradiance and illuminance, is revealed in two measurement; 3) effects of PM10 on SPD are investigated, and its efficiency and accuracy are verified.
Section snippets
Hypotheses
The solar spectrum consists of a continuous wavelength in which each band exhibits its unique energy. The extraterrestrial solar spectrum is modified as it passes through the atmosphere, losing the shortest and long infrared wavelength due to the absorption by ozone, water vapor, carbon dioxide, and other factors (Bird and Riordan, 1986). There is a loss in visible light owing to Mie scattering (Bourassa et al., 2008) and Rayleigh (Alpers et al., 2004) scattering in the atmosphere, which causes
Comparison of two measurement methods
The original data was measured with the use of a spectrometer and a cosine corrector in two methods, namely GHI (—) and GNI (⊥). The explanation of two ways is elucidated in Section 2.2, and the measured data for analysis with 7 clear skies, 2018 (Table 2). To analyze the performance between the GHI and GNI measurement, the deviation between GNI calculated values (GHI measured value divided by the sine of solar altitude) and GNI measured values were compared and listed in Fig. 4.
It is suggested
The effects of PM10 on SPD with a continuous wavelength band
Based on the analysis in Section 3.3, the linear relation between PSIr and PSIl (510 nm) at different PM10 concentrations is obtained. However, the relation between other correlated wavelengths and PM10 remains unclear. To exhibit the relation between PM10 and SPD with a continuous wavelength completely in the second measuring period (Fig. 3), the value of PSIr and PSIl (380 ~ 546 nm) under the influence of PM10 values is necessary to study with 3-D graphics, and the results are shown in Fig. 10
Conclusions
In the present study, the relation between PM10 concentrations and SPD are elucidated with two methods, i.e., GHI and GNI measurement. It is reported that the irradiance deviation is confined into 9%, and the illuminance deviation is about 3.5% for the scattering effect. The relations of global irradiance and illuminance values by both methods were investigated with PM1, PM2.5, PM4, and PM10 concentrations using correlation analysis in SPSS, which indicates that the value of correlation
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by National Key R&D Program of China (2018YFC0705100), and it is also a part of National Natural Science Foundation of China (51808011 & 51778009).
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