Diffuse Surface Solar Irradiance from Himawari Satellites for Australia

A source of diffusely transmitted downward surface solar irradiance for the Australian continent and surrounding waters, derived from daytime Himawari-8/9 satellite imagery using the Qin et al. (2021a) algorithm. The product is available in both a regular latitude/longitude grid and the original geostationary projection.

Use Cases

• Analyze spatial patterns of diffuse solar irradiance across the Australian continent using the gridded data.
• Validate and compare solar irradiance models using the algorithm-derived data from Himawari-8/9 imagery.
• Study the impact of atmospheric conditions on diffuse irradiance for the specified geographic region.

Strengths

• Derived from Himawari-8/9 geostationary satellite imagery, providing consistent observation.
• Covers the Australian continent and surrounding waters, offering regional spatial coverage.
• Data is available in two projections: a regular latitude/longitude grid and the original satellite projection.

Limitations

• The specific data volume, row count, and column structure are not provided.
• Access requires contacting the authors, as data is hosted on the Australian National Computational Infrastructure (NCI).
• Primary file formats are HTML, PNG, and WMS, which may not be ideal for direct quantitative analysis without conversion.

Provenance

Source

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network's Data Discovery.

Collection Method

Generated from daytime Himawari-8/9 imagery using the Qin et al. (2021a) algorithm.

Freshness

The metadata was last updated in March 2026, indicating active maintenance.

Geography

Australian continent and surrounding waters.