WeatherCat > WeatherCat General Discussion

Solar Radiation Question...

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jg:
Today was much sunnier than yesterday, but the Solar Radiation "Gauge" only shows 782.  The weather almanac shows that today had nearly an hour more sunlight than yesterday.  Does that make sense?

http://www.jgweather.info/RoslynWeather/index.html

WCDev:
When calculating sunshine hours, WeatherCat simulates a Campell-Stokes sunshine recorder. This is basically a strip of paper behind a glass globe facing towards the sun. The glass globe concentrates the suns rays on the paper which then burns if the solar radiation is strong enough (more details at   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell?Stokes_recorder).

So it isn't really the strength of the solar radiation, but just a question of is the sun strong enough to burn the paper; either it's burnt or it isn't (we then add up the length of the burn for any given day to get the number of hours).

How accurate is it? I have a real one about three miles away from me, which is used to calibrate WC's simulation. The largest discrepancy I've seen is about an hour.

jg:
Does Solar Radiation have anything to do with UV?  It seems impossible that there were 100 less units today than the day before as there was more sun today, less clouds, etc.

WCDev:
All WeatherCat does with solar and UV  is record the data - all I can think of is possible high cloud cutting down the radiation hitting the sensor.

jg:
Thanks.  The ET data is very interesting and has great uses in landscaping/agricultural field.

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