SOLRAD

SOLRAD#

The SOLRAD network consists of 9 surface radiation monitoring stations and is operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The reader is referred to Hicks et al. (1996) for background information on the SOLRAD network.

Instrument calibrations

A list all instruments that have been used and their respective calibration coefficients can be found here.

Station name Abbreviation State Country Latitude Longitude Elevation Time period Network Owner Comment Data availability Instrumentation
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Data retrieval#

Measurements from the SOLRAD stations are stored in daily ASCII text files and can be freely downloaded from the SOLRAD FTP server. Since January 1st 2015, data has been logged as 1-minute averages of 1-second samples. Prior to this, the data was stored as 3-minute averages.

Data can be downloaded and parsed conveniently using the pvlib-python iotools module using the function pvlib.iotools.get_solrad. If you use pvlib iotools for published work, please cite Jensen et al. (2023) which provides additional background information. The use of the function is shown below, demonstrating how to retrieve five days of data:

import pvlib

data, meta = pvlib.iotools.get_solrad(
    station='ABQ',  # station identifier
    start=pd.Timestamp(2020,6,1),
    end=pd.Timestamp(2020,6,5))

# show a subset of the data
show(data.iloc[:, 7:], dom="tpr")
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solar_zenith ghi ghi_flag dni dni_flag dhi dhi_flag uvb uvb_flag uvb_temp uvb_temp_flag std_dw_psp std_direct std_diffuse std_uvb
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columns = ['ghi', 'dhi', 'dni']
axes = data[columns].plot(
    subplots=True, legend=False, rot=0, figsize=(6, 6), sharex=True)

# Set y-labels and y-limits
for ax, column in zip(axes, columns):
    ax.set_ylabel(f"{column.upper()} [W/m$^2$]")
    ax.set_ylim(-10, 1400)
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References#

  • Adam R. Jensen, Kevin S. Anderson, William F. Holmgren, Mark A. Mikofski, Clifford W. Hansen, Leland J. Boeman, and Roel Loonen. Pvlib iotools—open-source python functions for seamless access to solar irradiance data. Solar Energy, 266:112092, 2023. doi: 10.1016/j.solener.2023.112092.

  • B. B. Hicks, J. J. DeLuisi, and D. R. Matt. The NOAA integrated surface irradiance study (ISIS) - a new surface radiation monitoring program. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 77(12):2857–2864, 1996. doi: 10.1175/1520-0477(1996)077<2857:TNISIS>2.0.CO;2.

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