Total Downward Solar Irradiance for Australia from Himawari Satellites

Delivering total downward surface solar irradiance (SSI) derived from daytime Himawari-8/9 satellite imagery for the Australian continent and surrounding waters. The data is generated using the Qin et al. (2021a) algorithm and is available in both a regular latitude/longitude grid and the original geostationary projection.

Use Cases

• Analyze spatial patterns of solar irradiance across the Australian continent using the latitude/longitude grid data.
• Validate and calibrate solar energy forecasting models with satellite-derived SSI data for the region.
• Study temporal changes in surface solar irradiance using daytime Himawari-8/9 imagery sequences.
• Integrate SSI data with other meteorological datasets for climate and energy research over Australia and surrounding waters.

Strengths

• Data is generated using a peer-reviewed algorithm (Qin et al., 2021a) published in Solar Energy.
• Covers the Australian continent and surrounding waters, a defined geographic region.
• Available in multiple spatial representations: a regular latitude/longitude grid and the original Himawari geostationary projection.

Limitations

• Access requires contacting the authors, as data is hosted on the Australian National Computational Infrastructure (NCI).
• Data availability is currently limited; a near-real-time processor is under development for improved access.
• Primary file formats are HTML, PNG, and WMS, which may not be ideal for bulk quantitative analysis compared to structured data formats.

Provenance

Source

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network's Data Discovery, via data_gov_au.

Collection Method

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

Freshness

The dataset metadata was last updated on March 20, 2026.

Geography

Australian continent and surrounding waters.