The Izaña BSRN station

Abstract

The BSRN (Baseline Surface Radiation Network) is a project of the Radiation Panel from the Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX) under the umbrella of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). Since March 2009 the Izaña Atmospheric Observatory belongs to the BSRN network. The Izaña Observatory is a Global Atmospheric Watch station. It is a high mountain station, located at Tenerife Island (2.367 m. above sea level). The measurements recorded in this station are sent on a monthly basic to the BSRN database are: global, direct, diffuse, longwave downward, net, UV-A, UV-B radiation and the data obtained with rawinsondes launched daily from the Santa Cruz de Tenerife station, located 30 km from the Izaña station. In this work we focused on the study of the global, direct and diffuse radiation measurements, performed at the Izaña Observatory during 2009. The results show a high quality of BSRN measurements. Although Izaña is a high mountain station there are 357 days with valid measurements for 2009. A 99% of the measurements are within the limits recommended by the BSRN. Furthermore there is a very good agreement between the measurements and the simulated values with the radiative transfer model LibRadtran using a sample set of 129 days with cloud free sky conditions. The daily values of the global and direct radiation show a RMSE lower than 2%, while the diffuse radiation shows a RMSE of about 10%. © Sociedad Española de Óptica.