Exponential approximation for daily average solar heating or photolysis

Abstract

When incorporating formulations of instantaneous solar heating or photolytic rates as functions of altitude and sun angle into long range forecasting models, it may be desirable to replace the time integrals by daily average rates that are simple functions of latitude and season. This replacement is accomplished by approximating the integral over the solar day by a pure exponential. This gives a daily average rate as a multiplication factor times the instantaneous rate evaluated at an appropriate sun angle. The accuracy of the exponential approximation is investigated by a sample calculation using an instantaneous ozone heating formulation available in the literature.