Solar irradiance, sunshine duration and daylight illuminance derived from METEOSAT data for some European sites

Summary Radiometric ground truth data from seven Norwegian stations (58–64° N), and from five other European stations (38–61° N), are compared to satellite-derived data in the present paper. Hourly global irradiance at ground level is estimated by the Heliosat procedure from the “visible” channel of the geostationary satellite METEOSAT. With increasing latitude this satelllite sees the earth’s surface at an increasingly unfavourable angle. Nevertheless, in this paper, global irradiance estimates reproduce high latitude ground truth data with negligible Mean Bias Deviations (MBD) and only minor deviations regarding frequency distributions. Moreover, the Root Mean Square Deviations (RMSD) are comparable to those typically seen between ground truth stations some 20–30 km apart. Using a number of auxiliary models, a multiplicity of ground level solar radiation data is obtained from satellite-derived global irradiance data, and made available at the SATEL-LIGHT www server. The accuracy of the half-hourly data thus derived from Heliosat global irradiances, using models for diffuse fraction, luminous efficacy and slope/horizontal ratios, is successfully verified against ground truth data. Received August 31, 2000/Revised January 31, 2001