Solar radiation plays a chief role in many human activities like agriculture, architecture, energy planning and policies, etc. It constitutes a clean and renewable source of energy. For better knowledge of the availability of this source of energy, computational models can be used to obtain numeric solution of radiative transfer equations and to estimate the energy fluxes in the Earth's atmosphere. This work reveals what is behind the satellite models and their use to derive the surface solar radiation, having the BRASIL-SR model as a case example. The BRASIL-SR model is currently being applied to map the solar energy potential for Latin America within the SWERA project (Solar and Wind Energy Resource Assessment). The Global Environment Facility (GEF) through a United Nations Environment Program grant supports this project.
solar energy; radiative transfer; aerosols; atmosphere; SWERA project
