Moving beyond the Aerosol Climatology of WRF-Solar: A Case Study over the North China Plain

Abstract Numerical weather prediction (NWP), when accessible, is a crucial input to short-term solar power forecasting. WRF-Solar, the first NWP model specifically designed for solar energy applications, has shown promising predictive capability. Nevertheless, few attempts have been made to investigate its performance under high aerosol loading, which attenuates incoming radiation significantly. The North China Plain is a polluted region due to industrialization, which constitutes a proper testbed for such investigation. In this paper, aerosol direct radiative effect (DRE) on three surface shortwave radiation components (i.e., global, beam, and diffuse) during five heavy pollution episodes is studied within the WRF-Solar framework. Results show that WRF-Solar overestimates instantaneous beam radiation up to 795.3 W m−2 when the aerosol DRE is not considered. Although such overestimation can be partially offset by an underestimation of the diffuse radiation of about 194.5 W m−2, the overestimation of the global radiation still reaches 160.2 W m−2. This undesirable bias can be reduced when WRF-Solar is powered by Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) aerosol forecasts, which then translates to accuracy improvements in photovoltaic (PV) power forecasts. This work also compares the forecast performance of the CAMS-powered WRF-Solar with that of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts model. Under high aerosol loading conditions, the irradiance forecast accuracy generated by WRF-Solar increased by 53.2% and the PV power forecast accuracy increased by 6.8%. Significance Statement Numerical weather prediction (NWP) is the “go-to” approach for achieving high-performance day-ahead solar power forecasting. Integrating time-varying aerosol forecasts into NWP models effectively captures aerosol direct radiation effects, thereby enhancing the accuracy of solar irradiance forecasts in heavily polluted regions. This work not only quantifies the aerosol effects on global, beam, and diffuse irradiance but also reveals the physical mechanisms of irradiance-to-power conversion by constructing a model chain. Using the North China Plain as a testbed, the performance of WRF-Solar on solar power forecasting on five severe pollution days is analyzed. This version of WRF-Solar can outperform the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts model, confirming the need for generating high spatial–temporal NWP.