Model data selection using gamma test for daily solar radiation estimation

Hydrological modelling is a complicated procedure and there are many tough questions facing all modellers: what input data should be used? how much data is required? and what model should be used? In this paper, the gamma test (GT) has been used for the first time in modelling one of the key hydrological components: solar radiation. The study aimed to resolve the questions about the relative importance of input variables and to determine the optimum number of data points required to construct a reliable smooth model. The proposed methodology has been studied through the estimation of daily solar radiation in the Brue Catchment, the UK. The relationship between input and output in the meteorological data sets was achieved through error variance estimation before the modelling using the GT. This work has demonstrated how the GT helps model development in nonlinear modelling techniques such as local linear regression (LLR) and artificial neural networks (ANN). It was found that the GT provided very useful information for input data selection and subsequent model development. The study has wider implications for various hydrological modelling practices and suggests further exploration of this technique for improving informed data and model selection, which has been a difficult field in hydrology in past decades. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.