For the instantaneous dryness mapping, the satellite derived aridity index is proposed. The proposed index is derived from the day/night surface temperature and the maximum solar flux, also it is proved that the index corresponds to the thermal admittance from the theoretical analysis of the surface energy balance. From the MODIS LST and reflectance product during 10 years, daily/monthly global...

Introduction: Accurate models of the lunar thermal and illumination environment require a realistic treatment of scattered radiation at high incidence and emission angles. It has long been appreciated that the bidirectional reflectance of lunar soil is anisotropic [1], yet most lunar thermal models still assume that scattered radiation is isotropic. We recently measured the bidirectional reflec...

Thermal properties of tree hollows play a major role in survival and reproduction of hollow-dependent fauna. Artificial hollows (nest boxes) are increasingly being used to supplement the loss of natural hollows; however, the factors that drive nest box thermal profiles have received surprisingly little attention. We investigated how differences in surface reflectance influenced temperature prof...

Hemispherical reflectance and internal quantum efficiency measurements have been employed to evaluate the response of Si nanostructured surfaces formed by using random and periodic reactive ion etching techniques. Random RIE-textured surfaces have demonstrated solar weighted reflectance of= 3 ‘?XO over 3001200-nm spectral range even without the benefit of anti-reflection films. Random RIE-textu...

The present work reports on the comparative characterization of optical properties of hafnium and zirconium-based ultra-refractory ceramics at room and high temperature, in view of their possible use in novel solar receivers for thermal solar plants operating at higher temperatures. We show how porosity and surface finishing affect both the spectral reflectance and the high-temperature emittanc...

The surfaces of Jupiter’s moons are profoundly weathered by jovian charged particle and solar ultraviolet (UV) irradiation. Although early observations of the Galilean satellites suggested that their reflectance spectra were modified by energetic particles, it has only recently been shown quantitatively that radiolysis and photolysis, the chemical alteration of a surface by charge-particles and...

A solution-grown subwavelength antireflection coating has been investigated for enhancing the photovoltaic efficiency of thin film solar cells. The 100-nm-height ZnO nanorods coating benefited the photocurrent of Cu(In,Ga)Se2 solar cells from 31.7 to 34.5 mA/cm2 via the decrease of surface light reflectance from 14.5% to 7.0%, contributed by the gradual refractive index profile between air and ...

In order to analyze the influence of methods to design antireflection coatings (ARCs) on reflectivity of broadband solar cells, we provide detailed analyses about the ARC coupled with a window layer and the refractive index dispersion effect of each layer. By multidimensional matrix data simulation, two methods were employed to measure the composite reflection of a SiO2/ZnS double-layer ARC wit...

Thin oxide interlayers are commonly added to the back reflector of thin-film silicon solar cells to increase their current. To gain more insight in the enhancement mechanism, we tested different back reflector designs consisting of aluminium-doped zinc oxide (ZnO:Al) and/or hydrogenated silicon oxide (SiOx:H) interlayers with different metals (silver, aluminium, and chromium) in standard p-i-n ...

The optical properties of perovskites at ambient temperatures are important both to the design of optimised solar cells as well as in other areas such as the refinement of electronic band structure calculations. Limited previous information on the optical modelling has been published. The experimental fitting parameters for optical constants of CH3NH3PbI3-x Cl x and CH3NH3PbI3 perovskite films ...