Abstract
We analyzed the contents and usefulness of the world surface data reported by Japan Meteorological Agency. The data includes daily values of climate, such as air pressure, temperature, precipitations and weather, at about 400 sites in the world from 1982 and about 3000 sites from 1999. However, the data includes neither solar radiation, nor sunshine duration. Therefore, we evaluated an equation to estimate the solar radiation from the daily mean cloud amount and vapor pressure. The equation could estimate solar radiation in the area from tropical to temperate conditions in the monsoon Asia, and the accuracy was fairly good in comparison with an equation developed to estimate the solar radiation from the sunshine duration. The results indicated that the world surface data was quite useful as the primary weather data.
