In order to calculate the ground reflectivity pg, in an iterative procedure values larger than the mean value of the distribution plus ag are filtered out, until convergence is achieved. The mean value of the new distribution is assigned to pg.

In the original Heliosat method a constant value ag was used, ag = 27 is a suitable value for MSG. But an approach that accounts for the dependency of ag on the sun-satellite geometry leads to even better results. The bias of the clear sky irradiance is used as a measure to quantify the influence of ag. For clear sky situations, the quality of the ground reflectivity can be evaluated directly and there is little super imposition with other effects. If ag is chosen too small, the corresponding values of the ground reflectivity will be too small as well. This results in an underestimation of the irradiance. On the other hand, if CTg is too high, an overestimation of the irradiance is the consequence. Best results were found for 15<=CTg<= 50 for different classes of solar and satellite zenith angles and the azimuth angle between sun and satellite.