Validation of CM SAF Surface Solar Radiation Datasets over Finland and Sweden

Accurate determination of the amount of incoming solar radiation at Earth's surface is important for both climate studies and solar power applications. Satellite-based datasets of solar radiation offer wide spatial and temporal coverage, but careful validation of their quality is a necessary pr...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Remote sensing (Basel, Switzerland) Switzerland), 2015, Vol.7 (6), p.6663-6682
Main Authors: Riihelae, Aku, Carlund, Thomas, Trentmann, Jorg, Mueller, Richard, Lindfors, Anders V
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Climate
Climate studies
Earth surface
irradiance
Latitude
Remote sensing
Retrieval
Sampling
Satellites
Solar power
Solar power generation
Solar radiation
Temporal logic
validation
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Accurate determination of the amount of incoming solar radiation at Earth's surface is important for both climate studies and solar power applications. Satellite-based datasets of solar radiation offer wide spatial and temporal coverage, but careful validation of their quality is a necessary prerequisite for reliable utilization. Here we study the retrieval quality of one polar-orbiting satellite-based dataset (CLARA-A1) and one geostationary satellite-based dataset (SARAH), using in situ observations of solar radiation from the Finnish and Swedish meteorological measurement networks as reference. Our focus is on determining dataset quality over high latitudes as well as evaluating daily mean retrievals, both of which are aspects that have drawn little focus in previous studies. We find that both datasets are generally capable of retrieving the levels and seasonal cycles of solar radiation in Finland and Sweden well, with some limitations. SARAH exhibits a slight negative bias and increased retrieval uncertainty near the coverage edge, but in turn offers better precision (less scatter) in the daily mean retrievals owing to the high sampling rate of geostationary imaging.
ISSN:2072-4292
2072-4292
DOI:10.3390/rs70606663