SARAH-2 Solar Radiation

The PVGIS-SARAH2 solar radiation data made available here have been derived based on the second version of the SARAH solar radiation data record
provided by the EUMETSAT Climate Monitoring Satellite Application Facility (CM SAF). PVGIS-SARAHs uses the images of the METEOSAT geostationary
satellites covering Europe, Africa and Asia (±65° longitude and ±65° latitude). More information can be found in Gracia Amillo et al., 2021. The data
available here are only long-term averages, calculated from hourly global and diffuse irradiance values over the period 2005-2020.

Areas not covered by SARAH-2 are filled out with data from ERA5.


Metadata

The data sets in this section have these properties:

  •  Format: GeoTIFF
  •  Map projection: geographic (latitude/longitude), ellipsoid WGS84
  •  Grid cell size: 3' (0.05°) for SARAH-2 and 0.25° for ERA5.
  •  North: 72° N
  •  South: 37° S
  •  West: 20° W
  •  East: 63,05° E
  •  Rows: 2180 cells
  •  Columns: 1661 cells
  •  Missing value: -9999


Solar radiation data sets consist of the average irradiance over the time period in question, taking into account both day and night-time, measured in W/m2. Optimum angle data
sets are measured in degrees from horizontal for a plane facing the equator (south-facing in the northern hemisphere and vice-versa).


Available data sets


References

Gracia Amillo, A.M.; Taylor, N; Martinez A.M.; Dunlop E.D.; Mavrogiorgios P.; Fahl F.; Arcaro G.; Pinedo I. Adapting PVGIS to Trends in Climate, Technology and User Needs. 38th
European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition (PVSEC), 2021, 907 - 911.