A model for calculating global solar radiation from geostationary satellite data is presented. The model is designed to calculate the monthly average hourly global radiation in the tropics with high aerosol load. This model represents a physical relation between the earth-atmospheric albedo derived from GM55 satellite data and the absorption and scattering coefficients of various atmospheric constituents. The absorption of solar radiation by water vapour which is important for the tropics, was calculated from ambient temperature and relative humidity. The relationship between the visibility and solar radiation depletion due to aerosols was developed for a high aerosol load environment. This relationship was used to calculate solar radiation depletion by aerosols in the model. The total column ozone from TOMS/EP satellite was employed for the determination of solar radiation absorbed by ozone. Solar radiation from four pyranometer stations was used to formulate the relationship between the satellite band earth-atmospheric albedo and broadband earth-atmospheric albedo required by the model. To test its performance, the model was used to compute the monthly average hourly global radiation at 25 solar radiation monitoring stations in tropical areas in Thailand. It was found that the values of monthly average of hourly global radiations calculated from the model were in good agreement with those obtained from the measurements, with the root mean square difference of 10%. After the validation the model was employed to generate hourly solar radiation maps of Thailand. These maps reveal the diurnal and season variation of solar radiation over the country. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.