Generation of daily and hourly solar radiation values for modeling water quality in aquaculture ponds

A stochastic model has been developed for generation of daily and hourly so lar radiation values that can be used as inputs in a water quality model fo r aquaculture ponds. The daily solar radiation values are generated based o n the monthly probability distribution of the daily clearness index. The mo nthly probability distributions are obtained from an incomplete historical daily solar radiation data set collected from fish pond sites. The hourly r adiation values are estimated by breading down the generated daily value us ing an empirical equation from the literature. The model has been applied t o locations in Thailand, Honduras, and Rwanda. The length of historical dat a for the different locations ranged between six and eight years. The gener ated values show good agreement with the measured data. This model can be u sed to generate solar radiation values for locations having scant historica l information.