Controlling the quality of solar irradiation data by means of a web service

Michael Geiger (1) , Lamissa Diabaté (2) , Lionel Ménard (1) , Lucien Wald (3)

1 CEP - Centre Énergétique et Procédés
2 UFAE / GCMI
3 CEP/Sophia

The control of the quality of the irradiation data is often a prerequisite to the further processing of the data. Though data are usually controlled by meteorological offices, the sources are so numerous that the user often faces time-series of measurements containing questionable values. As customers of radiation data, we established our own procedures to screen time-series of measurements. Since this problem of quality control is of concern to many researchers and engineers and since it is often a lengthy and tedious task, we decided to make this screening procedure available to everyone as a web service. This service is the purpose of this paper. The objective is not to perform a precise and fine control, an objective out of reach without details on the site and instruments, but to perform a likelihood control of the data and to check their plausibility. This is achieved by comparing observations with some expectations based upon the extraterrestrial irradiation and a simulation of the irradiation for clear skies. This service is available to everyone on the Web site www.helioclim.net. It offers a very convenient mean to check time-series of irradiation: data are input in a HTML page by a copy and paste procedure and the return is also a HTML page that can be analyzed in details for the data flagged as suspicious.

Domaines: Sciences de la Terre; Océan, Atmosphère; Sciences de l'environnement; Traitement du signal et de l'image [eess.SP]; Traitement du signal et de l'image [eess.SP]

Michael Geiger, Lamissa Diabaté, Lionel Ménard, Lucien Wald. Controlling the quality of solar irradiation data by means of a web service. European Geophysical Society, 27th General Assembly, Apr 2002, Nice, France. pp.A-03419. ⟨hal-00465569⟩