Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service (CAMS) Solar radiation service (CRS)
Copernicus, the European Union’s Earth observation programme provides services in different environmental themes embodying state of the planet Earth. The solar radiation services meet the needs of European and national policy development for the energy transition and they support with their open data policy public and commercial downstream services in planning, monitoring, efficiency improvements, and integration of renewable energies into the energy supply grids, targeting particularly the solar energy applications.
Duration: January 2019 until June 2021
Funded by: European Commission/European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF)
Project Participants: Institute of Networked Energy Systems German Remote Sensing Data Center Institute of Solar Research Armines, Paris, France Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI), Helsinki, Finland Transvalor S.A., Mougins Cedex, France
Project Manager at the Institute of Networked Energy Systems: Dr. Marion-Schroedter-Homscheidt
Project Description:
Copernicus, the European Union’s Earth observation programme provides services in different environmental themes embodying state of the planet Earth. The Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Services (CAMS) represent the atmospheric specific part and is implemented by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) on behalf of the European Commission. CAMS operational services comprise the global reanalysis and forecasts of the global atmospheric composition, air quality analyses and forecasts, information to support policy, Solar and UV radiation products, greenhouse gas fluxes, climate forcing and emissions.
DLR has led the development and implementation of solar radiation services in the pre-operational projects Monitoring Atmospheric Composition and Climate (MACC) phases I to III in the formation of CAMS. DLR was awarded the lead for solar radiation services through CAMS-72 (2016-2018) which is continued now in 2019-2021. This project is a continuation of the work started in the precursor projects with new aspects, data and new generation of satellites and the implementation of 2017 and 2018 development results.
The aim of the project is the provision of CAMS services for solar radiation, monitoring and quality control of services, further development of the services by R & D, and providing user support.
The objective is realized in collaboration with partners through several activities as follows:
As a prime contractor, DLR is managing and coordinating the project. On the research and development part, DLR is carrying out the reception, archiving, processing of ground and satellite measurements and method development and evaluation studies. The DLR scientists are involved in the further development of the services encompassing the derivation of cloud physical parameters, further improvement of these algorithms and the use of cloud products in algorithms for the derivation of solar irradiance products. The integration of the Apollo next generation (Apollo-NG) algorithm (developed, tested and published by DLR) in CAMS-72 is foreseen.
Currently, the CAMS solar radiation services include all-sky (clear sky and cloudy sky) radiation for Europe/Africa/Middle East in the field of view of Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) geostationary satellite instruments. The cloudy sky solar radiation services can be extended to a global scale exploiting the observations from the instruments aboard third generation geostationary satellites. For the service extension to other parts of the globe, the feasibility study and framework development is performed using Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite 16 (GOES-16) (by NASA and NOAA) and HIMAWARI-8 (by Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA).