TY  - JOUR
A1  - Kothe, Steffen
A1  - Good, Elizabeth
A1  - Obregón, André
A1  - Ahrens, Bodo
A1  - Nitsche, Helga
T1  - Satellite-based sunshine duration for Europe
T2  - Remote sensing
N2  - In this study, two different methods were applied to derive daily and monthly sunshine duration based on high-resolution satellite products provided by the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) Satellite Application Facility on Climate Monitoring using data from Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) SEVIRI (Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager). The satellite products were either hourly cloud type or hourly surface incoming direct radiation. The satellite sunshine duration estimates were not found to be significantly different using the native 15-minute temporal resolution of SEVIRI. The satellite-based sunshine duration products give additional spatial information over the European continent compared with equivalent in situ-based products. An evaluation of the satellite sunshine duration by product intercomparison and against station measurements was carried out to determine their accuracy. The satellite data were found to be within ±1 h/day compared to high-quality Baseline Surface Radiation Network or surface synoptic observations (SYNOP) station measurements. The satellite-based products differ more over the oceans than over land, mainly because of the treatment of fractional clouds in the cloud type-based sunshine duration product. This paper presents the methods used to derive the satellite sunshine duration products and the performance of the different retrievals. The main benefits and disadvantages compared to station-based products are also discussed.
KW  - sunshine duration
KW  - Meteosat Second Generation
KW  - evaluation
KW  - CM SAF
KW  - cloud type
KW  - surface incoming direct radiation
KW  - climate monitoring
Y1  - 2013
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/30097
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-300978
SN  - 2072-4292
N1  - Updated Version, uploaded 17 June 2013
N1  - © 2013 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).
VL  - 5
IS  - 6
SP  - 2943
EP  - 2972
PB  - Molecular Diversity Preservation International (MDPI)
CY  - Basel
ER  -