Hi everyone,
I would like to use monthly or daily time series of sunshine duration or any other product related to the surface incoming radiation for the modelling of vegetation phenology (spring onset). 2002-2011.
As far as I know there is a dataset of sunshine duration from WMO Regional climate Centre on climate monitoring (www.dwd.de/rcc-cm). However, this dataset is interpolated from a limited number of ground stations. I was wondering if there exist others datasets retrieved from satellite imagery (i.e. SEVIRI) or both satellite+stations.
Thanks
Dear Victor
If you only need sunshine duration can do using any GIS, which depends only on the day of year and latitude , if you want a more detailed analysis of incoming solar radiation information, maybe you can use any available data set, as Nicolas Delpierre suggests
best regards
Hello,
For the GIS model (POTENTIAL solar energy based on the latitude and the terrain (including occlusions) ), we've derived it at 90 m (based on cleaned SRTM data). You can visualize it per week on our Website (www.uclouvain.be/lifewatch). There is no download tool yet for technical reason (extraction/projection tools under construction), but I can send the data if needed.
You can use satellite-based databases of surface solar irradiance such as the HelioClim databases.
- HelioClim-1 (1985-2005, daily value of irradiation, 20 km resolution) for free
- HelioClim-3 (2004-, 15-min value of irradiation, 3 km resolution) for free for the restricted time period 2004-2005 and for pay for the time period from 2006.
More information could be found at www.soda-is.com and www.soda-pro.com.
Article The HelioClim Project: Surface Solar Irradiance Data for Cli...
The Soda Service (www.soda-is.com, or www.soda-pro.com) offers access to several databases containing values of solar irradiation available at surface. Among these databases are the HelioClim databases. These databases cover the field-of-view of the Meteosat satellites, i.e. Europe but excluding latitudes greater than approx. 60 N.
HelioClim-1, daily and monthly values, from 1985 to 2005. Has been used in many domains, incl. yours. See e.g., https://hal-mines-paristech.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00993945v2/document
HelioClim-3, free for 2004-2005, from 15 min up to month, as stated by Philippe Blanc
HelioClim-4, free, from 15 min up to day. This is a pre-operational service set up and operated jointly by DLR and MINES ParisTech/Armines on behalf of the European Commission (MACC projects led by ECMWF). All data are for free. It is currently limited to the year 2013. It should be extended from 2004-02-01 up to current day-2 in the next few weeks.
The HelioClim databases are organised to deliver a time-series of data for a given site. For example, in one click, you may get from HelioClim-1 21 years of daily values for Southampton. This is not very convenient if you want daily maps of surface solar irradiation. The CM-SAF data set recommended by Arturo Sanchez-Lorenzo is likely more convenient and has an excellent quality.
https://hal-mines-paristech.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00993945v2/document
CM-SAF and HelioClim are indeed good sources of surface radiation data at relatively high spatial resolution. You can add the PVGIS data to the list:
http://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvgis/
Sunshine is only a rough proxy for surface radiation, so if what you really need is the latter, avoid sunshine.
I totally agree with Chris : sunshine duration is "only" the number of hours during which the direct irradiance is above a given threshold (120 W/m^2 for WMO, sometimes more, for example in Switzerland with a 200 W/m^2 threshold).
Therefore with this quantity it is difficult to assess accurately the intra-day variability of the surface solar irradiance or the resulting daily irradiation. There exist some (old) empirical models to assess monthly mean of intra-day global horizontal irradiance from the sunshine duration (e.g. Angstrom, 1924). Be careful about the applicability and the accuracy of these type of empirical models generally established in one place for a restricted time period with in-situ measurements.
You might want to check the Surface Solar Energy dataset available from the data center at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA:
https://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/project/sse/sse_table
Here is their brief description:
The Release 6.0 Surface meteorology and Solar Energy (SSE) data set contains parameters formulated for assessing and designing renewable energy systems. This latest release contains new parameters based on recommendations by the renewable energy industry and it is more accurate than previous releases. Global, regional and site specific radiation and meteorological data allow quick evaluation of potential renewable energy projects for any region of the world. The SSE data set is formulated from NASA satellite- and reanalysis-derived insolation and meteorological data for the 22-year period July 1983 through June 2005. Results are provided for 1° latitude by 1° longitude grid cells over the globe.
Linda,
The SSE database is well-known in the solar world indeed. However, it has only a crude spatial resolution compared to the other datasets I mentioned, and it stops in 2005, which does not fit the requirements mentioned in the question. Finally, my tests have shown that the SSE accuracy is not as good or consistent as other sources...
Is that potential sunshine or real sunshine?
There is difference between them.
Hi Xiaolei
I am interested in both. However potential is easier to compute as it would be astronomical photoperiod as far as I know.
Thanks
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