Direct radiation (and less importantly, global radiation) is mostly affected by cloudiness, then aerosols. Both may have long-term trends that either reflect or induce some aspects of climate change. You can look for the numerous papers devoted to "global dimming" and "global brightening". Most have been published with data from Europe or North America. What you can do in your country would be much interesting. Such studies, however, must rely on very long records (multiple decades) of high-quality radiation data. Stations with that long records are not many in hte world, which is an important limitation.

Concomitant observations of cloud fraction (or possibly sunshine) would be extremely important too.

You can also evaluate the regional radiative forcing.

UV radiation is more about ozone than climate change. However, it is still interesting to know about the trend in UV since the Montreal protocol, i.e., if UV tends to decrease in your area as we hope.

Direct radiation (and less importantly, global radiation) is mostly affected by cloudiness, then aerosols. Both may have long-term trends that either reflect or induce some aspects of climate change. You can look for the numerous papers devoted to "global dimming" and "global brightening". Most have been published with data from Europe or North America. What you can do in your country would be much interesting. Such studies, however, must rely on very long records (multiple decades) of high-quality radiation data. Stations with that long records are not many in hte world, which is an important limitation.

Concomitant observations of cloud fraction (or possibly sunshine) would be extremely important too.

You can also evaluate the regional radiative forcing.

UV radiation is more about ozone than climate change. However, it is still interesting to know about the trend in UV since the Montreal protocol, i.e., if UV tends to decrease in your area as we hope.

Thank you. I will design a series of measurement campaigns to measure direct solar radiation (T and RH too) in high altitude sites.

The solar radiation data sets have long been used in the architectural design and therefore they are easily available and there are several software for producing and analyzing these data sets. Using these data sets in research on climate change will be surely interesting. As for relating these data sets to climate impacts, you may first find their effect on the relevant parameters of the land surface which can introduce a broad range of research fields, e.g., geology. Then the effect of the change in land surface characteristics on the climate variables may be investigated. For instance, if you wish to find out about global warming using solar radiation data and maybe by employing GIS, you have to consider the variations in the land-use of the study area.

Hope this helps.

Peyman

Solar radiation data are used to assess pollution by aerosol particles (small "dust") in the atmosphere. However it is not a climate parameter. Also, there are very few long time records and solar radiation is also (too) sensitive to very thin clouds. I refer to

http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/uploads/WGIAR5_WGI-12Doc2b_FinalDraft_Chapter02.pdf

Section

2.2.3.1 Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) from Remote Sensing

German, You mentioned "at high altitude".  The mountains and high plateaus of the Andes are known to be the places on earth with the highest possible solar resource (and UV). This is because of very low cloudiness and aerosols aloft. But these are also the two commanding factors behind the dimming and brightening effects. Thus, it might be very difficult to detect such effects and their trends in the high Andes due to the very low signal in the first place.

If by climate change you just mean "global warming", then the simpler and more conventional measurement of temperature would be the key.

Thank you very much for your advice , Chris. I will review my methologies and objetives.

I like to add that climate change means a change of averages over a period of (at least) 30 years. This implies a measuring series of 60 years to see a difference between 2 periods of 30 years.

I think the original intention of the question was in the context of the dimming/brightening issue, which can be studied at a shorterr time scale than global climate change in general.

Chris

Agreed, but the questioner should make it clear what ASPECT of Climate Change he wants to study.

Dimming gives information on the loading of particles/particulate matter and clouds. I have worked in European projects on "dimming" with experts in the field, Lippert / Russak and know that trend analysis is not simple and also needs decades of data.