Establishing a Long-term 30 Year Global Solar Resource at 10 km Resolution: Preliminary Results From Test Processing and Continuing Plans

Abstract:

As renewable energy system become more prevalent, improved global long-term, up-to-date records are needed to better understand and quantify the solar resource and variability. Toward this end, a project involving NASA, DOE NREL, SUNY-Albany and the NOAA National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) was initiated to provide NREL with a solar resource mapping production system for improved depiction of global long-term solar resources that provides the capacity for continual updates. This new production system is made possible by the efforts of NOAA and NASA to completely reprocess the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) data set that provides satellite visible and infrared radiances together with retrieved cloud and surface properties on a 3-hourly basis beginning from July 1983 at an effective 10 km resolution. Thus, working with SUNY and NCDC, NASA will develop and test an improved production system that will yield an operational production system for NREL to continually update the Earth’s solar resource. In this presentation, we provide a general overview of this project together with samples of the new solar irradiance mapped data products and comparisons to surface measurements at various locations across the world. Here, a three-year prototype of the anticipated ISCCP data set called GridSat is used to assess the algorithms and demonstrate the production system. GridSat maps together cross-calibrated visible and IR reflectances from all the world’s geosynchronous satellites at 10 km and 3-hourly respectively. The results are shown and discussed in comparison to existing solar data products. Additionally, the solar irradiance values are compared to various Baseline Surface Radiation Network surface site measurements and other high quality surface measurements. The statistics of the agreement between the measurements and new satellite estimates are also reviewed. The team is now testing a beta release of the revised ISCCP data set through the NOAA NCDC. This data set also includes the cross-calibrated AVHRR polar orbiter imager measurements that will allow a true global coverage.  Lastly, we will identify the next steps in the production of the data set including some accuracy goals as the current production system is adapted to the new ISCCP data products.