USER’S GUIDE to the MACC-RAD Services on solar energy radiation resources March 2015

Kurzfassung

The European Earth observation programme Copernicus aims at providing environmental information to support policymakers, public authorities and both public and commercial users. A systematic monitoring and forecasting of the state of the Earth's subsystems is currently under development. Six thematic areas are developed: marine, land, atmosphere, emergency, security and climate change. A land monitoring service, a marine monitoring service and an atmosphere monitoring service will contribute directly to the monitoring of climate change and to the assessment of mitigation and adaptation policies. Additional Copernicus services will address respectively emergency response and security-related aspects. The pre-operational atmosphere service of Copernicus is currently provided through the FP7 projects MACC and MACC-II (Monitoring Atmospheric Composition and Climate). MACC combines state-of-the-art atmospheric modelling with Earth observation data to provide information services covering European Air Quality, Global Atmospheric Composition, Climate, and UV and Solar Energy. Within the radiation subproject (MACC-RAD) existing historical and daily updated databases for monitoring incoming surface solar irradiance are further developed. The service meets the needs of European and national policy development and the requirements of (commercial) downstream services (e.g. planning, monitoring, efficiency improvements, integration into energy supply grids). The present Users’ Guide describes the data, methods and operations used to deliver timeseries of solar radiation available at ground surface. Part A ‘Users’ Expectations’ describes the communities of users, their expectations and gives an overview of the compliance of the MACC RAD service with those. Part B ‘The legacy HelioClim-3 and SOLEMI databases’ describes the current databases HelioClim-3 and SOLEMI. These databases operated by DLR for SOLEMI and ARMINES and its subsidiary Transvalor for HelioClim-3 have been specifically developed in several national, European and ESA projects to fulfil the requirements for long-term databases and NRT services. Part B intends to summarize existing knowledge, which has been published only in a scattered manner. Methods used to convert satellite images into solar surface irradiance are presented. The quality of the retrieved irradiances is discussed. An overview of the operations and workflow is presented for the creation, updating and monitoring of these databases. Part C ‘The new Heliosat-4 method’ describes the new Heliosat-4 method, including the McClear model describing the irradiance under clear-sky, and the new MACC-RAD service and provides an overview of the operations and the workflow. Part D ‘Quality control of estimates of irradiance’ discusses the means to control the quality of the elaboration of the products and to assess the uncertainty of the estimates of irradiance. Part E ‘Delivering products’ is devoted to the supply of MACC-RAD and McClear products. The products are defined. Means to accessing the MACC-RAD and McClear products is presented. It is intended to update this User’s Guide regularly following the realisation of the MACC RAD service line.