Validation of monthly surface solar radiation over Europe derived from the CM SAF dataset against homogenized GEBA series (1983-2005)

Abstract

This work presents a validation of the solar surface radiation (SSR) derived from the Satellite Application Facility on Climate Monitoring (CM SAF) over Europe for a 23-years period of records on monthly basis. The derived SSR is based on the visible channel of the Meteosat First Generation satellites, providing a dataset with a high spatial resolution (0.03° × 0.03°) covering the 1983-2005 period. The CM SAF SSR dataset is compared against 47 of the longterm SSR monthly series recently homogenized from the Global Energy Balance Archive (GEBA) over Europe. The results show an excellent agreement between both datasets (r = 0.93, p < 0.01), with only a slight overestimation (bias of +5.20 Wm-2) of the CM SAF records as compared to the surface observations. Equally, there is a mean absolute bias (MAB) of 8.19 Wm-2 that is below the accuracy threshold defined by the CM SAF. There is a clear maximum and minimum MAB during the summer and winter, respectively, with an opposite cycle if the relative MAB values are considered. © 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.