CAMS Solar Radiation Service, variability-based evaluation and service evolution to other parts of globe

Abstract

The Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service (CAMS) offers Solar radiation services (CRS) providing information on surface solar irradiance (SSI). The services meet the needs of European and national policy development and the requirements of partly commercial downstream services in the solar energy sector for e.g. planning, monitoring, efficiency improvements, and integration of renewable energies into the energy supply grids. At present, the service is derived from Meteosat Second Generation (MSG). CRS provides clear and all-sky time series combining satellite data products with numerical model output from CAMS on the optical state of the atmosphere. The clear sky and all-sky products are available from 2004 until yesterday through the CAMS Radiation Service portal and the Atmospheric Data Store (ADS) in the Copernicus portal by making use of the SoDa portal capabilities. The service quality is ensured through regular monitoring and evaluation of input parameters, quarterly benchmarking against ground measurements and automatic consistency checks. Variability of solar surface irradiances in the 1-minute range is of interest especially for solar energy applications and such a variability-based analysis can help assess the impact of recent improvements in the derivation of all-sky irradiance under different cloudy conditions. The variability classes can be defined based on ground as well as satellite-based measurements. This study will show the evaluation of the CAMS CRS based on the eight variability classes derived from ground observations of direct normal irradiation (DNI) (Schroedter-Homscheidt et al., 2018). The CRS service evolution includes its extension to other parts of the globe. The highlights of the framework development towards the operational implementation, with a focus on HIMAWARI-8 by Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) will be shown. References: CAMS Radiation Service (clear sky): http://solar.atmosphere.copernicus.eu/cams-mcclear CAMS Radiation Service (all-sky): http://solar.atmosphere.copernicus.eu/cams-radiation-service Copernicus portal: http://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/ Schroedter-Homscheidt, M., S. Jung, M. Kosmale, 2018: Classifying ground-measured 1 minute temporal variability within hourly intervals for direct normal irradiances. – Meteorol. Z. 27, 2, 160–179. DOI:10.1127/metz/2018/0875.