Solar Radiation information for different cities worldwide. See the legend below to interpret the columns of data.
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UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS LOWELL PHOTOVOLTAIC PROGRAM
INTERNATIONAL SOLAR IRRADIATION DATABASE, Version 1.0
MONTHLY SOLAR IRRADIATION
The main section of the database includes site location data
and
monthly daily global horizontal irradiation, over the period of
record.
The irradiation unit used is kWh m-2 day-1.
The data are presented in tables with country name headings,
23
columns, and 1 or 2 rows for each named site.
The first row
gives
the monthly mean values for irradiation. The
following row,
identified
by the symbol "S" in Column 9, gives the standard
deviations.
In many cases, we received only monthly values
averaged
over several years, and not multiple years of monthly
values,
so that the standard deviation could not be computed.
The following table describes the information in each column.
COLUMN
HEADING & DESCRIPTION
1 CODE:
An alpha-numeric code used to reference the row of
data to the source information (of printed document).
2 SITE:
The city, town or station where the data was
recorded.
3 LATITUDE:
The site latitude expressed in degrees.
4 LATITUDE;
HEMISPHERE (not labeled): N or S
for northern
or southern hemisphere. Lower
case n or s indicates
latitude not given with site data, but obtained
elsewhere.
5 LONGITUDE:
The site longitude expressed in degrees.
6 LONGITUDE;
RELATIVE TO GREENWICH MERIDIAN (not labeled):E
or W for east or west of the meridian.
Lower case e or w
indicates latitude not given with site data, but obtained
here.
7 ELE:
Elevation of the site in meters above sea level.
8 YRS:
The number of years of data that are
included
9 D:
The type of data in columns 10-21:
I - Monthly mean daily global horizontal irradiation.
S - Unbiased standard deviation of global irradiation:
where Si is the average value for year i, and Si bar is
the average over n years.
10-21 JAN through DEC:
Monthly values of: mean daily global
horizontal irradiation in kWh m-2 day-1; or unbiased standard
deviation of the global irradiation in kWh m-2 day-1.
22 AVG:
The yearly average of the irradiation data in
columns 10-21 for I data rows; or the standard deviation
of the yearly averages for S data rows.
23 SRC:
The nature of the data source. The
symbols used
are described below. Detailed
information on data
sources is given in printed document:
P - Irradiance measured using pyranometer.
H - Data calculated from cloud cover information or bright
sunshine hours.
U - Data from source lacking information on instrumentation.
A few of the data sources made reference to the accepted
standards
for reporting insolation data. The
standards include the
International
Pyrheliometric Scale (IPS) adopted in 1956, and the
World
Radiometric Reference (WRR); (WRR=IPS*1.022).
The World
Meteorological
Organization (WMO) recommends use of the WRR.
Information
in the printed document indicates the standard used
where
known.
Site names are listed alphabetically within their countries.
In
some cases, data sources give differing spellings to what appear
(from
coordinate data) to be the same location. In
general, we
respected
the differences in spelling and present the source
version.
In some cases, the source lists site numbers or
experiment
numbers rather than location names. These
sites are
included
for their location data.