Estimation and Investigation of Photosynthetically Active Radiation Using Meteorological Parameters over Ikeja, Nigeria

Photosynthetically active radiation (PAR; 0.4 - 0.7μm) is a key driver in ecosystem biochemical processes, and thus a critical factor in agriculture productivity, ecosystem-atmosphere energy, and CO2 fluxes. In this study, the measured monthly averaged daily global solar radiation, relative humidity, wind speed, minimum and maximum temperature dataset was utilized to estimate and investigate the Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR) for Ikeja (latitude 6.58 N, longitude 3.33 E and 39.4 m above sea level) located in the coastal region ofNigeria. The meteorological parameters used in this work were obtained from the archives of National Aeronautics and space Administration (NASA) for a period of thirty-eight years (1984-2021).The newly developed temperature PAR based models were statistically tested using the coefficient of determination (R2), Mean Bias Error (MBE), Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Mean Percentage Error (MPE), t – test and index of Agreement (IA) to ascertain the accuracy and applicability of the models. The results show that, the highest and lowest values of PAR were found during the rainy season with 8.3426 MJ and 6.4936 MJ in the months of April and July respectively. Based on the developed models, the model equation (16g) is the most suitable for estimating PAR for Ikeja with R2, MBE, RMSE, MPE, t-test and IA values of 80.9 , 0.0062 MJ , 0.3415 MJ -0.1974 0.0601 and 92.8712 respectively.