Results obtained using the parametric models SPCTRAL2 and SMARTS2 for the urban area of Valencia, Spain, have been analysed and compared with experimental measurements at ground level obtained with two Li-cor 1800 spectroradiometers with a 6 nm resolution. The study used two different input parameters in both models for the aerosol characterisation: the aerosol optical thickness at 0.5 mu m, tau(a lambda(0.5)), and the Angstrom turbidity coefficient beta. The results obtained show that both algorithms reproduce quite correctly the spectral irradiance experimental values when an urban aerosol model parameterised by the tau(a lambda(0.5)) value is considered. In all the cases the deviations are lower when SMARTS2 code is used.